CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vbams-word
Technical Toatkay
Technical Toatkay

Reputation: 1

Find the exact digits in a Word Document

I am trying to find specific digits in a Microsoft Word Document which contains text and digits, with VBA.

For example the text in the document is as follows;

(1) 52.203-19, This is a some text here
(2) 52.204-23, Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog 52 times.
(3) 52.204-25, I tried to search for a solution 52.204 times.
(4) 52.2, Could not find any luck though
(5) 52.203, this is blowing my mind away with mac 2.36

I wish to find the exact digits "52.2" as a whole.
I don't want to find instances where 52.2 is a part of another number like 52.203 or 52.204.

Also when I would like to find 52.203 then I want to exclude all instances like 52.203-xx where xx could be any two digit number.

In short I would like to find the exact number only as a whole and not in between the numbers, just like Excel's EXACT function.

Should I use RegEx or should I use Word's Advanced Find function with wildcards through VBA?

What I have finds all instances which I don't want.

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
    .Text = "52.2"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindAsk
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = True
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute

Upvotes: 0

Views: 804

Answers (3)

Technical Toatkay
Technical Toatkay

Reputation: 1

The solution proposed by Mr. @TimothyRylatt worked for me perfectly specially after the addition of [!-] to avoid the hyphen containing numbers. However, I needed to implement this solution through a VBA Macro so I modified my code a little bit like this.

The working of Modified Code & the Code itself

Sub find_numbers()
      Dim Str As String
 'Create Search String for WildCard Search
  Str = "<" & "52.203" & ">" & "[!-]"
   Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
        With Selection.Find
            .Text = Str
            .Replacement.Text = ""
            .Forward = True
            .Wrap = wdFindAsk
            .Format = False
            .MatchCase = False
            .MatchWholeWord = False
            .MatchWildcards = True 'make this option true to use WildCards
            .MatchSoundsLike = False
            .MatchAllWordForms = False
        End With
    Selection.Find.Execute
 End Sub

Upvotes: 0

Timothy Rylatt
Timothy Rylatt

Reputation: 7850

No need for RegEx. You can use Find with wildcards. For explanation see https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/General/UsingWildcards.htm

enter image description here

Upvotes: 0

ljdyer
ljdyer

Reputation: 2086

Regular expressions seems like the way to go for this.

First, go to Tools > References in the VBA editor and make sure that there is a check next to the Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5 library.

The following code worked for me on your sample text to remove only the '52.2' after the '(4)' without affecting any of the surrounding characters:

Sub removeNumber()

Dim regExp As Object
Set regExp = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")

With regExp
    .Pattern = "\b52.2\b"
    .Global = True
    Selection.Text = .Replace(Selection.Text, "")
End With

End Sub

\b means word boundary so will not match any digits before or after the '52.5'.

Upvotes: 0

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