Find and Replace in Multiple Documents

  • Thread starter Elizabeth Bowman
  • Start date
E

Elizabeth Bowman

Is anyone aware of a find and replace software that will complete multiple
documents compatable with Microsoft Office 2007? I've tried some of the free
software available and the one I actually got to work corrupted the files. I
work for a non profit company and buying a software at the end of our fiscal
year is not feasible. If anyone has any ideas, please send them my way!
Thanks!
 
J

Jay Freedman

Elizabeth said:
Is anyone aware of a find and replace software that will complete
multiple documents compatable with Microsoft Office 2007? I've tried
some of the free software available and the one I actually got to
work corrupted the files. I work for a non profit company and buying
a software at the end of our fiscal year is not feasible. If anyone
has any ideas, please send them my way! Thanks!
Click to expand...

The macros shown in http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/BatchFR.htm will
work in Word 2007, provided you change the "*.doc" to "*.docx" to take
account of the new file extension.

See http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm if needed.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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Elizabeth Bowman

I applied the macro as a global template but it is still not working. Any
suggestions?

:
 
B

Bob Buckland ?:-\)

Hi Elizabeth,

Can you elaborate a bit on your existing files and what you're trying to change?

============I applied the macro as a global template but it is still not working. Any
suggestions? >>
--

Bob Buckland ?:)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*
 
J

Jay Freedman

I'm afraid "not working" doesn't give me any clue to what's wrong. Can you be
more specific?

- Does anything happen when you run the macro, or does it just do nothing?
- Are there any error messages? If so, please quote the exact text.
- Does the VBA editor open with a line of code highlighted in yellow? If so,
which line?
- Is the folder containing the documents on a local drive, or on a network
share? What is the path?
- What version of Windows is installed?
- Have you applied service packs to Office and Windows? What's the latest one
you have for each?
- Do you have any add-ins in Word? Which ones?
- Anything else that seems unusual or "not working" in Word?
 
E

Elizabeth Bowman

The whole purpose behind this need for multiple find&replace is due to a
change in a job title that is spilled over hundreds of documents.

When I run the macro is does nothing. There are no error messages. There
are no highlighted words. The documents are on a network shared folder.
Windows XP Professional is installed on my computer. Do you mean by "Service
Packs", updates?, then yes. I have not placed any new add-ins, just the
basics preinstalled is what I have. Word has been slow to respond when
opening a document for the last week. When I open up "new" it is quick to
respond, but those already created have been running at a slow pace the past
week. I scanned the software for problems and the error report specified a
driver for an Epson printer was the cause. The only problem being is that I
don't have, nor have I ever had, and Epson printer installed on this
computer. Yet when I did a search, text files for an Epson were on the "C"
drive. Microsoft advised me to allow assistance under Word options and try
running the scan again in a week. And to be honest with you, I have never
applied a macro or even remotely tried to apply something to a global
template. This is all new to me.
 
E

Elizabeth Bowman

These are shared files on our network server. A job title changed and this
is throughout hundreds of documents. The majority of the documents I have to
work with on this shared file is saved in 97-2003 format, the rest are .doc
and .docx. Word has been running at an extremely slow pace the last week and
I am working on trying to fix that, making it near impossible to open every
file and change this job title when it's taking slow long to open each of
them. Oh, and by the way, I have never worked in this side of a software
before. I know how to use the programs or easily figure out but I've never
applied macros or even knew what a global template was before yesterday.
 
J

Jay Freedman

I can't help much with the slowness problem. The trouble with the macro is
fairly easy, though.

Near the top of the code is the line

PathToUse = "C:\Test\"

This is just a placeholder for the path to the documents you want to change.
Since you probably don't even have a folder named Test on your C: drive, the
macro doesn't find any documents and just stops.

You have to modify that line to contain the real path. Then you should get
the standard Replace dialog to fill in the search term and replacement; when
you click OK, the macro will ask whether to continue.
 
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