Search Pattern

[GilesB]

Hi All,

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction on a couple of things. I'm trying to write a macro that when run will find words of a particular pattern in my document and then paste the list to a new document. I've pretty much got it working with the code below, but the search patterns I can use in Selection.Find.Text and using the Like operator seem to be very limited:


Sub ListAcronyms()
Dim strAcronym As String
Dim strDictAcron As New Scripting.Dictionary
Dim str As Variant
Dim strTemp As String

Application.ScreenUpdating = False 'Dont update the screen
'Start from the top of the document, this could cause problems if acronymn list has laready been added.
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
ActiveWindow.View.ShowHiddenText = False

'Find a possible acronym

Do
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.ClearFormatting 'Clear previous search
.Text = "<[A-Z]*>"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = Word.wdFindStop
.Format = False
.MatchCase = True
.MatchWildcards = True
.MatchWholeWord = True
.Execute
End With


If Selection.Find.Found Then
strAcronym = Selection.Text

strTemp = Selection.Text
strTemp = Right(strTemp,(Len(strTemp)-1))
If strTemp Like "*[A-Z]*" Then
strDictAcron.add strAcronym, strAcronym
End If

End If



Loop Until Not Selection.Find.Found


If strDictAcron.Count > 0 Then
Dim newDoc As Document
Set newDoc = Documents.Add
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory

'Type the text
For Each str In strDictAcron
Selection.TypeText Text:=str & vbCr
Next str

newDoc.Content.Sort SortOrder:=wdSortOrderAscending
End If

End Sub


For example one of the searches I might want to implement would be to find words that don't start with an uppercase letter but do have uppercase letters elsewhere in the word.


Is there a better way to achieve what I'm trying to achieve?
Can I use complex regular expressions in the code I'm using now or would I need to take a different approach?


Also another question, what exactly does the Word Constant wdFindStop mean? And is there a constant I could use to ensure the selection ends with the next white space character? For example with the aobve code A.B.C gets selected as A.B


All help will be much appreciated, thanks.


Giles

[shasur]

Hi

You can try <[a-z]{1,}[A-Z]{1,}*>

wdFindStop is the constant to for 'Wrapping up' the search. This WordWrap constant makes the search stop once the end of the document is reached.

[GilesB]

Thanks shasur, good to know about the wdFindStop and I'll give that notation for the search pattern a go.