Find words with more than one capital letter in word/VBA

Question

I have a piece of VBA code that uses Find to find all the acronyms in a document. It does this by searching for all words consisting of capital letters that are 2 or more characters long using...

<[A-Z]{2,}>

The problem with this is it doesn't pick up all the acronyms, such as CoP, W3C, DVDs and CD-ROM. It picks up hyphenated acronyms in two parts which are not ideal but allowable as the list is checked by a user. I can also pick up words that end with an "s" or other characters by not searching to the end of the word using...

<[A-Z]{2,}

But this doesn't count any non-upper case character as part of the word it finds.

Is there an expression that would allow me to search for words with two or more capital letters in any location and find the whole word?

Answer 1

I don't think it's possible to 'search for words with two or more capital letters in any location and find the whole word' except in combination with macro code. Since you're using a macro, anyway, here's an approach that worked for me using the following sample text

CoP, this That and AnoTher thing W3C, DVDs and CD-ROM

and this wildcard combination (note that the list separator in my Windows configuration is ;, for other regions a , may be required).

<[A-Z][0-9A-Z\-a-z]{1;10}>

The following function checks whether the second or any later letter in the "found" range is capitalized and returns a boolean to the calling procedure. It loops through the characters in the given Range, checking the ASCII value. As soon as one is found, the loop exits.

Function ContainsMoreThanOneUpperCase(rng As Word.Range) As Boolean
    Dim nrChars As Long, i As Long
    Dim char As String
    Dim HasUpperCase

    HasUpperCase = False
    nrChars = rng.Characters.Count
    For i = 2 To nrChars
        char = rng.Characters(i).text
        If Asc(char) >= 65 And Asc(char) <= 90 Then
            'It's an uppercase letter
            HasUpperCase = True
            Exit For
        End If
    Next
    ContainsMoreThanOneUpperCase = HasUpperCase
End Function

An example for using it:

Sub FindAcronyms()
    Dim rngFind As Word.Range
    Dim bFound As Boolean

    Set rngFind = ActiveDocument.content
    With rngFind.Find
        .text = "<[A-Z][0-9A-Z\-a-z]{1;10}>"
        .MatchWildcards = True
        .Forward = True
        .wrap = wdFindStop
        bFound = .Execute
        Do While bFound
            If bFound And ContainsMoreThanOneUpperCase(rngFind) Then
                Debug.Print rngFind.text
                rngFind.HighlightColorIndex = wdBrightGreen
            End If
            rngFind.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
            bFound = .Execute
        Loop
    End With
End Sub

Answer 2

You might use something like:

Sub Demo()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdPink
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.Highlight = True
    .Forward = True
    .Format = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Text = "<[A-Z][A-Z0-9/-]{1,}"
    .Replacement.Text = "^&"
    .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    .Text = "<[A-Z][A-Za-z0-9/-]@[A-Z]"
    .Replacement.Text = "^&"
    .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
  End With
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Answer 3

You can't do this in one pass of Find/Replace. You also have to make some allowances for what the Word application considers a Word and then where the acronym is located in the sentence or paragraph.

The following code should provide an idea for how you might do it with a combination of Wildcard searching and then additional VBA string manipulation.

It is setup to deal with words that start with capital letters, you will need to carry it further and add code and wildcard search criteria for words that start with lowercase letters if you expect to have any of those.

Sub FindAcronynms()
    Dim rng As word.Range
    Set rng = ActiveDocument.Content
    With rng.Find
        .ClearFormatting
        .Format = False
        .Forward = True
        .MatchWildcards = True
        .Text = "<[A-Z]{1,}[a-z][A-Z]>"
        .Wrap = wdFindStop
        .Execute
        Do While .found
            MoveEndOfString rng
            rng.HighlightColorIndex = wdTeal
            rng.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
            .Execute
        Loop
    End With
    Set rng = ActiveDocument.Content
    With rng.Find
        .ClearFormatting
        .Format = False
        .Forward = True
        .MatchWildcards = True
        .Text = "[A-Z]{1,5}[0-9][A-Z]{1,5}"
        .Wrap = wdFindStop
        .Execute
        Do While .found
            MoveEndOfString rng
            rng.HighlightColorIndex = wdTeal
            rng.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
            .Execute
        Loop
    End With
    Set rng = ActiveDocument.Content
    With rng.Find
        .ClearFormatting
        .Format = False
        .Forward = True
        .MatchWildcards = True
        .Text = "<[A-Z]{2,}>"
        .Wrap = wdFindStop
        .Execute
        Do While .found
            MoveEndOfString rng
            rng.HighlightColorIndex = wdTeal
            rng.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
            .Execute
        Loop
    End With
    MsgBox "Action Complete", vbExclamation, "Custom Find"
End Sub
Private Function MoveEndOfString(ByRef rng As word.Range)
    rng.MoveEnd wdCharacter, 1
    Select Case Asc(rng.Characters.Last)
        Case Is <= 32
            rng.MoveEnd wdCharacter, -1
        Case 45
            rng.MoveEnd wdCharacter, 1
            rng.MoveEnd wdWord, 1
            If Asc(rng.Characters.Last) = 32 Then
                'required because move above includes
                'trailing space
                rng.MoveEnd wdCharacter, -1
            End If
    End Select
End Function