Hi Lance:

Each numeric tag matches to a specific text string?

Have you looked at the Named Item feature in GV? That would allow you to create a list that maps your tags to a text description (the tags could be letter rather than digits). You would use the function GETNAMEDITEM() to extract the text string.

GV formulas don't have a looping construct to handle a variable number of tags in a field. However look at the CHOOSE() function which will select a tag from a comma separated list.

I haven't tried this but I think it will work.