<p>I work in VBA, and want to parse a string eg</p>



<pre><code>&lt;PointN xsi:type='typens:PointN' 
xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' 
xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'&gt;
    &lt;X&gt;24.365&lt;/X&gt;
    &lt;Y&gt;78.63&lt;/Y&gt;
&lt;/PointN&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>and get the X &amp; Y values into two separate integer variables.</p>

<p>I'm a newbie when it comes to XML, since I'm stuck in VB6 and VBA, because of the field I work in.</p>

<p>How do I do this?</p>

This is a bit of a complicated question, but it seems like the most direct route would be to load the XML document or XML string via MSXML2.DOMDocument which will then allow you to access the XML nodes.
You can find more on MSXML2.DOMDocument at the following sites:
Manipulating XML files with Excel VBA & Xpath
MSXML -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms763742(VS.85).aspx
An Overview of MSXML 4.0