help with range.find method not finding search term

I am trying to speed up the following function using the .find method rather than the original DO loop.
I can't figure out why the str is not found by the .find method
FYI, I have it set up to run both methods of finding the row number to determine if the new method always returns the same as the original method before I delete the original DO loop.

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Thanks in advance.

Thanks Bernie,
I was wondering if you threw a couple of timer statements in there if you find that the .find method is any quicker than my original routine. this routine is deep in some loops so I am really interested in getting every bit of performance as possible. I know that the STR will match case with the cell value, so I removed the UCASE. Based on another site, I have tried assigning the range to variant (array) and then looping through the variant array but had the same performance. Thanks for verifying the .find method works for you. Any possibility you might have an answer for my other two recent posts that have no responses?

Thanks Bernie,
I found my issue with my find method. the following single line always returns r2.row=1 even though I have ~10,000 rows of data and the first row with no data in column A is 9,943.
Do you know the proper syntax to find the first row w/o data in the range? My range is a single column equivalent to "A1:A10000"

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For reference the second half of routine:

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The cells were set using code:

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Which approach would I use?