Finding Text Boxes

Word has a powerful search and replace capability that lets you search for virtually anything in your document. Word even includes codes you can use to search for special items. (Click the Special button in the Find and Replace dialog to see what codes are available.) One thing you cannot search for, however, is text boxes. There is no special code that allows you find text boxes, and you can't search for them using the Object Browser.

You can, however, use a macro to look through a document and stop when it finds a text box. The following macro stops on each text box it finds and asks the user if that is the text box wanted.

Sub SearchTextBox()
    Dim shp As Shape
    Dim sTemp As String
    Dim iAnswer As Integer

    For Each shp In ActiveDocument.Shapes
        If shp.Type = msoTextBox Then
            shp.Select
            Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.TextRange.Select
            sTemp = Selection.Text
            sTemp = Left(sTemp,20)
            iAnswer = MsgBox("Box contains text beginning with:" & vbCrLf _
              & sTemp & vbCrLf & "Stop here?", vbYesNo, "Located Text Box")
            If iAnswer = vbYes Then Exit For
        End If
    Next
End Sub