I have a VBA macro for Microsoft Word that I am trying to improve.
The purpose of the macro is to bold and italicize all words in a document that match the search terms in the first table of the document.
The problem is the search terms include wildcards which are the following:
the hyphen “-“: between letters a wildcard for either a space or a period
asterisk “&”: (the site is not letting me put in asterisks as this is the markdown for italicize, so I’ll put in the & symbol instead to get around the filters) a wildcard for any number of characters at the beginning of a word or at the end. Unlike normal programming languages though, when it is used in the middle of the word it needs to be combined with the hyphen to be a wildcard for a range of characters. For example “th&-e” would pick up “there” while “th&e” would not.
question mark “?”: wildcard for a single character
What I am doing so far is just testing for these characters and if they are present I either lop them off in the case of the asterisk, or I alert the user that they have to search for the word manually. Not ideal 😛
I have tried the .MatchWildcard property in VBA but have not yet gotten it to work. I have a feeling it has something to do with the replacement text, not the search text.
A working macro will take the following as its input (the first row is intentionally ignored and the second column is the one with the target search terms):
Imagine this in a table all in the second column (as the html allowed here doesn’t allow tr and td etc)
First row: Word
Second row: Search
Third row: &earch1
Fourth row: Search2&
Fifth row: S-earch3
Sixth row: S?arch4
Seventh row: S&-ch5
And it will search the document and replace with bold and italicized content like so:
Search Search1 Search2 Search3 Search4 Search5
Note: S-earch3 could also pick up S.earch3 and replace with Search3
As one might assume the search terms will usually not be right next to each other – the macro should find all instances.
I will include my attempted but nonfunctional code as well after the first working macro.
The code for the working macro will be on pastebin for a month from today, which is 9/17/09, at the following url.
Thanks again for any thoughts and help you might have to offer!
Sara
Working VBA Macro:
Sub AllBold()
Dim tblOne As Table
Dim celTable As Cell
Dim rngTable As Range
Dim intCount As Integer
Dim celColl As Cells
Dim i As Integer
Dim rngLen As Integer
Dim bolWild As Boolean
Dim strWild As String
Set tblOne = ActiveDocument.Tables(1)
intCount = tblOne.Columns(2).Cells.Count
Set celColl = tblOne.Columns(2).Cells
strWild = ""
For i = 1 To intCount
If i = 1 Then
i = i + 1
End If
Set celTable = ActiveDocument.Tables(1).Cell(Row:=i, Column:=2)
Set rngTable = ActiveDocument.Range(Start:=celTable.Range.Start, _
End:=celTable.Range.End - 1)
rngLen = Len(rngTable.Text)
bolWild = False
If (Mid(rngTable.Text, rngLen, 1) = "&") Then 'remember to replace & with asterisk!'
rngTable.SetRange Start:=rngTable.Start, End:=rngTable.End - 1
End If
If (Mid(rngTable.Text, 1, 1) = "&") Then 'remember to replace & with asterisk!'
rngTable.SetRange Start:=rngTable.Start + 1, End:=rngTable.End
End If
If InStr(1, rngTable.Text, "-", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
strWild = strWild + rngTable.Text + Chr$(13)
bolWild = True
End If
If InStr(1, rngTable.Text, "?", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
strWild = strWild + rngTable.Text + Chr$(13)
bolWild = True
End If
If (bolWild = False) Then
Dim oRng As Word.Range
Set oRng = ActiveDocument.Range
With oRng.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = rngTable.Text
With .Replacement
.Text = rngTable.Text
.Font.Bold = True
.Font.Italic = True
End With
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End If
Next
If bolWild = True Then
MsgBox ("Please search the following strings with - or ? manually:" + Chr$(13) + strWild)
End If
End Sub
Attempted Nonfunctional VBA Macro:
Sub AllBoldWildcard()
Dim tblOne As Table
Dim celTable As Cell
Dim rngTable As Range
Dim intCount As Integer
Dim celColl As Cells
Dim i As Integer
Dim rngLen As Integer
Dim bolWild As Boolean
Dim strWild As String
Dim strWildcard As String
Set tblOne = ActiveDocument.Tables(1)
intCount = tblOne.Columns(2).Cells.Count
Set celColl = tblOne.Columns(2).Cells
strWild = ""
For i = 1 To intCount
If i = 1 Then
i = i + 1
End If
Set celTable = ActiveDocument.Tables(1).Cell(Row:=i, Column:=2)
Set rngTable = ActiveDocument.Range(Start:=celTable.Range.Start, _
End:=celTable.Range.End - 1)
rngLen = Len(rngTable.Text)
bolWild = False
If (Mid(rngTable.Text, 1, 1) = "&") Then 'remember to replace & with asterisk!'
rngTable.SetRange Start:=rngTable.Start + 1, End:=rngTable.End
End If
If InStr(1, rngTable.Text, "&", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then 'remember to replace & with asterisk!'
strWildcard = rngTable.Text
rngTable.Text = Replace(rngTable.Text, "&", "", 1) 'remember to replace & with asterisk!'
bolWild = True
End If
If InStr(1, rngTable.Text, "-", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
strWildcard = Replace(rngTable.Text, "-", "[.-]", 1)
bolWild = True
End If
If InStr(1, rngTable.Text, "?", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
strWild = strWild + rngTable.Text + Chr$(13)
strWildcard = Replace(rngTable.Text, "?", "_", 1)
bolWild = True
End If
If (bolWild = False) Then
Dim oRng As Word.Range
Set oRng = ActiveDocument.Range
With oRng.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = strWildcard
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchFuzzy = False
.MatchWildcards = True
With .Replacement
.Text = rngTable.Text
.Font.Bold = True
.Font.Italic = True
End With
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End If
Next
' If bolWild = True Then'
' MsgBox ("Please search the following strings with - or ? manually:" + Chr$(13) + strWild)'
' End If'
End Sub
1 Answer