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

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3368) 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: Occurrences of a Text String within a Document.