I have little to add to the other suggestions already made. I think it is unlikely you can home in on the address without it being delimited in some way.

The example above clearly delimits with "VAT No:" and "DESCRIPTION". I think you'll need to know what variations the invoices have had over the years and code for all of them.

Other tricks might help,

e.g. is there always a titled name (Mr,Mrs,Miss,Ms etc.) at the start of the address ?, If so analyze all the names in your dataset to identify all unique titles.

177 Elm Road, is the only line that starts with a number so the address is in that block

Address lines are the only ones that end with a comma, so use that block

The address is always in the first n lines of the invoice ?

The address always has a county in it ?

etc.

Also if you have access to postcode validation (database ?) that could help

Whatever, I assume you will end up with many invoices that can't be correctly handled, so you'll need to agree how to handle those exceptions.

In reply to Re^3: Extracting a (UK) Address by u671296
in thread Extracting a (UK) Address by ropey

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