Question

I am having a problem using regex patterns to replace items in HTML markup. The values that I am trying to replace are these:

<!--[if mso 9]-->
<style>
 p.MsoNormal<br />
 {margin-left:18.75pt;}<br />
</style>
<!--[endif]-->

and

class="MsoNormal"

I am not the best at using Regex the patterns that I have come up with so far are:

1. <!--(.*?)-->
2. class=\"msonormal\"
3. class=\"MsoNormal\"

Item 1 removes anything that starts with <!-- and ends with --> but it only does it once it doesn’t remove all instances.

I don’t think items 2 and 3 are working at all.

I found some of this information for the patterns here:

is there a Way to strip all Unnecessary MS Word Formatting from FCKEditor

The full listing of text that I want to remove is this:

    <!--[if !mso]><style>v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
.shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
</style><![endif]-->
<title>Blank</title>
<style>
    <!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
    {font-family:Helvetica;
    panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;}
@font-face
    {font-family:"Cambria Math";
    panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
@font-face
    {font-family:Calibri;
    panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
    {font-family:Tahoma;
    panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}
@font-face
    {font-family:"Arial Black";
    panose-1:2 11 10 4 2 1 2 2 2 4;}
@font-face
    {font-family:"Palatino Linotype";
    panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 5 5 3 3 4;}
@font-face
    {font-family:"Trebuchet MS";
    panose-1:2 11 6 3 2 2 2 2 2 4;}
@font-face
    {font-family:"Matura MT Script Capitals";
    panose-1:3 2 8 2 6 6 2 7 2 2;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
    {margin-top:0in;
    margin-right:0in;
    mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
    margin-left:0in;
    font-size:10.0pt;
    font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";
    color:#FFFFCC;
    mso-believe-normal-left:yes;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
    {mso-style-priority:99;
    color:blue;
    text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
    {mso-style-priority:99;
    color:purple;
    text-decoration:underline;}
p
    {mso-style-priority:99;
    mso-margin-top-alt:auto;
    margin-right:0in;
    mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
    margin-left:0in;
    font-size:12.0pt;
    font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
p.MsoAcetate, li.MsoAcetate, div.MsoAcetate
    {mso-style-priority:99;
    mso-style-link:"Balloon Text Char";
    margin-top:0in;
    margin-right:0in;
    mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
    margin-left:0in;
    font-size:8.0pt;
    font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";
    color:#FFFFCC;}
p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing
    {mso-style-priority:1;
    margin:0in;
    margin-bottom:.0001pt;
    font-size:12.0pt;
    font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
span.BalloonTextChar
    {mso-style-name:"Balloon Text Char";
    mso-style-priority:99;
    mso-style-link:"Balloon Text";
    font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";
    color:#FFFFCC;}
span.EmailStyle21
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
    color:black;}
span.EmailStyle22
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
    color:#0F243E;}
span.EmailStyle23
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle24
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
    color:#0F243E;}
span.EmailStyle25
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle26
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle27
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle28
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle29
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:windowtext;}
span.EmailStyle30
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle31
    {mso-style-type:personal;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle33
    {mso-style-type:personal-reply;
    font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
    color:#1F497D;}
.MsoChpDefault
    {mso-style-type:export-only;
    font-size:10.0pt;}
@page WordSection1
    {size:8.5in 11.0in;
    margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
    {page:WordSection1;}
-->
</style>
<!--[if mso 9]-->
<style>
    p.MsoNormal
    {margin-left:18.75pt;}
</style>
<!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1026" />
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>


<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: #1f497d;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: #1f497d;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

Answer 1

Try this pattern for catching the first group of items:

\<\!\-\-\[i[\w\s\p{P}\p{S}]+if\]\-\-\>

The point is to avoid .* as far as possible for it will eat the whole input string hence the ending criteria is not matched.

For the 2nd and 3rd, you only need to escape the = sign as in \=. They would be fine, however try the following pattern to catch other Mso* classes too:

class\=\"Mso[^\"]+\"