Search and Replace Question

[Nick Transier]

When I reach a caption text under a picture in my document, I copy the
picture, paste it into a new document, and then rename the new document with
the caption text. In order to do this I have to find and replace any illegal
characters (for save purposes) in the caption text eg ":"

First Question: How do I alter the selection text for the purpose of
formatting a file name without actually changing the text in the document.
For example, I select a caption: "Figure 1: Example Caption" and I want to
find/replace so that the file name is "Figure 1.Example Caption", but I do
not want the actual word document to change. I have a similar problem with
converting a table to text for export, but then the table has been changed
in the actual document which I do not want.

Second question: Can I search for several things at once and replace with
one character or do I need to repeat the following statement for everything:

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = ":" <------------- i.e. can I
put several selections here?
.Replacement.Text = "."
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

 

[Helmut Weber]

Hi Nick,
one very simple way would be,
to copy the selection, do the replacements
and paste what was copied afterwards.
For searching for either one of several characters
and replacing see:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/UsingWildcards.htm
In this example the search is for < or > or /
As < and > have a special meaning here,
they have to be preceeded by \
Sub Test556()
Resetsearch
Selection.Copy
Dim orng As Range
Set orng = Selection.Range
With orng.Find
.Text = "[\<\>/]"
.Replacement.Text = "_"
.MatchWildcards = True
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
MsgBox orng.Text ' your clean filename
End With
Selection.Paste ' restore the text
Resetsearch
End Sub
'---
Sub Resetsearch()
With Selection.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Text = ""
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.Execute
End With
End Sub

 

[Nick Transier]

Thanks for the help! Your code accomplishes what I needed with one problem
though. Once I paste the selection back in, it looses track of what "para" I
am on and then my whole loop stops working. Recall that I am looping through
a documents with an outer loops that executes:
For each para in Activedocument.Paragraphs
If something then
'do something
elseif something then
'do something
else
'do something else
end if
next para

Any ideas?

Thanks- Nick

 

[Helmut Weber]

Hi Nick,
in case you select whole paragraphs,
you might exclude the paragraph mark from the selection,
so that the paragraphs collection remains untouched.
Sometimes I prefer a loop of kind "for i = 1 to x",
where x would be activedocument.paragraphs.count, here,
to obtain additional information on which paragraph
is beeing processed.
HTH
Greetings from Bavaria, Germany
Helmut Weber, MVP
"red.sys" & chr(64) & "t-online.de"
Word XP, Win 98
http://word.mvps.org/