Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Repeating In a Macro.

Repeating In a Macro

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 20, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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One of the most common things you need to do when creating a macro is to repeat a block of actions for each occurrence of something within a file. This may sound strange, but those who program know the situation very well—you need to search through a file and then take some action, repeat the search and repeat the action, and so on until the end of the file is reached. The general approach is as follows:

Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
[set up for your search]
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found
    [take some action]
    Selection.Find.Execute
Wend

The first line in this example moves to the beginning of the document. You then use whatever commands necessary to set up for your search. When the Selection.Find.Execute line is encountered, Word performs the actual search. Then Selection.Find.Found is used to control the While ... Wend loop. This property (Selection.Find.Found) is set to True each time an executed search actually results in something being found. Thus, the whole While ... Wend loop is repeated over and over again, as long as whatever you are searching for continues to be found. As the last step in the loop, the Selection.Find.Execute statement is used to once again perform the search.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1083) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Repeating In a Macro.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is two less than 4?

2015-05-13 12:12:47

Dawn

What goes in the "take some action" section in your example?


2015-03-29 00:05:57

Redeer

I currently have a macro like this that goes character by character (i.e. slowly). It is changing the color of the character if the Selection.Find.Found color is not blue.
Is there any way to have it iterate through the whole document paragraph by paragraph or sentence by sentence?


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