I'm not sure if I worded the title correctly.

Basically is it possible to treat a string as HTML as if it was on the page? So I can use $("#elem") and all the other jQuery functions?

The HTML is loaded into a string from an ajax request and stored in a string. Instead of using regular expressions to access the data needed is it possible to use jQuery functions?

ajaxTextResponse.$("#telephone");

I know the above won't work, but you see what I am getting at.

Thanks