Occurrences of a Text String within a Document

Marc is looking for the fastest, most efficient way—within a macro—to determine a count of how many times a particular text string occurs within a document. Unfortunately there is no way to do this with a simple command or two; instead you need to "step through" a document using the Find and Replace feature of Word.

First, make a temporary copy of your document so that you don't run the risk of messing up your original document. Then use a variable in your macro to count the number of times the desired text gets replaced, and increment the variable every time a replacement occurs. In the following example, the number of times will end up in the variable Replacements. You can then use the value or convert the value to a string to display it.

Sub CountReplacements
    Dim Replacements As Integer

    Replacements = 0
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = InputBox("Enter the text you want to find:")
        .Replacement.Text = InputBox("Enter the replacement text:")
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceOne

        Do Until Not .Found
            .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceOne
            Replacements = Replacements + 1
            Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
        Loop

        If Replacements <> 0 Then
            MsgBox _
              "" & .Text & " has been replaced " & _
              CStr(Replacements) & " times with " & _
              .Replacement.Text
        Else
            MsgBox .Text & " was not found in the document/selection."
        End If
    End With
End Sub