Macro cannot find shading colour black

[macropod]

The colour 'black' is found when searched for 'yellow' by you, because the search for black is too generic inside the Word's internal coding

Not so. There is a bug in the interaction with Find and BackgroundPatternColorIndex/BackgroundPatternColor. A Find for wdBlack Finds everything that doesn't have a Background Color. A Find for wdYellow Finds both Yellow and Black. The workaround is do a Find for wdYellow and to apply an additional test to determine which of Yellow and Black it is. That's what the code I posted does.

[Aquinax]

giphy (1).jpg

By me your macro in its original form doesn't search at all. Only if I add Selection to With .Find and cut out the first lines like this:

Sub Demo()  
  With Selection.Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "*^13"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .ParagraphFormat.Shading.BackgroundPatternColorIndex = wdYellow
    .Format = True
    .Forward = True
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Execute
  End With

End Sub

does it start to search and indeed it finds yellow and skips black; and also finds other colours. It is the "No colour" shading fill which is the problem for finding black shaded par-s.

[macropod]

By me your macro in its original form doesn't search at all. Only if I add Selection to With .Find and cut out the first lines like this:

The code I posted works fine; it's your poor attempt to implement a revision of it that's the problem...

[Aquinax]

Certainly, it works fine by you, at your machine and system with their own specifics. What is true is that it doesn't work by me and that "searching yellow finds black and it's a bug" is untrue, as searching yellow finds yellow and thus there's no bug, and what is also true is that searching black finds "No colour" as well, and this is the problem for me

[Kilroy]

This works for me:

Sub DeleteBlackShadedParagraphs()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "*^13"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .ParagraphFormat.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = -587137025
    .Format = True
    .Forward = True
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Execute
  End With
  Do While .Find.Found
    If .Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = -587137025 Then .Delete
    .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
    .Find.Execute
  Loop
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

[Kilroy]

It doesn't seem to work on your sample document. I'm curious what method you're using to shade the paragraphs? When I choose shade "Black, Text 1" it works fine.

[Kilroy]

This works on your document:

Sub ChangeShadingAndThenDelete()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "*^13"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .ParagraphFormat.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = RGB(0, 0, 0)
    .Format = True
    .Forward = True
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Execute
  End With
  Do While .Find.Found
    If .Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = RGB(0, 0, 0) Then .Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = -587137025
    .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
    .Find.Execute
  Loop
End With
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "*^13"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .ParagraphFormat.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = -587137025
    .Format = True
    .Forward = True
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Execute
  End With
  Do While .Find.Found
    If .Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = -587137025 Then .Delete
    .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
    .Find.Execute
  Loop
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

[Kilroy]

How did you apply the shading?