Occurrences of a Text String within a Document

Here is another macro that will count occurrences of a phrase. It is about 10 times faster on long documents and is safer as it does not change the document.

Sub countStr()
Dim txt As String
txt = InputBox("Enter the text you want to find:")
MsgBox CountStrings(txt) & " occurrences of " & txt
End Sub

Function CountStrings(str As String) As Long
Dim count As Long
Dim aRange As Range
count = 0
Set aRange = ActiveDocument.Range
With aRange.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = str
.MatchCase = False ' True if you want exact case match
End With
Do
If aRange.Find.Execute(Replace:=wdReplaceNone) Then
count = count + 1
aRange.Collapse direction:=wdCollapseEnd
aRange.End = ActiveDocument.Range.End
Else: Exit Do
End If
Loop
CountStrings = count
End Function

Or an even easier way:

bigStr = activedocument.range.text
count = (len(bigStr) - len(replace(bigStr,subStr,"")) / len(subStr)
bigStr="" 'empty this out just to free the memory...

Or in just one line:
count = (len(activedocument.range.text) - len(replace(activedocument.range.text, subStr, "")) / len(subStr)

I was also looking for a simple function; thanks for confirming it doesn't exist!

However, there's a slightly simpler way to get the count than your function. Replacement is not necessary. The key is using selection.find.wrap = wdStop, and starting by moving to the top of the document. Then you can simply execute the find until .found = false and extract the count.
I started with your code, and converted it to a function:

Function countOccurrences(ByVal str2find As String)
Dim count As Integer
Dim rng As Range

Set rng = Selection.Range 'Hold you place!

countOccurrences = 0
Selection.HomeKey unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = str2find
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = False
.Execute
Do Until Not .Found
countOccurrences = countOccurrences + 1
.Execute
Loop
End With
rng.Select 'Go back to your place
End Function

If I'm looking for how many times a phrase and/or word appears in a document I use the built-in Find and Replace function.

Control-H to open the Find and Replace dialogue box.
Fill in the "Find what" and "Replace" with boxes with the same word/phrase and
Click Replace All

Word executes and displays a pop-up with "All done. We made # of replacements." where # is how many times the word/phrase exists.

Hi Allen,

I am trying to write a macro to search through a Word report document and populate the glossary table with any acronyms and definitions that it finds that are in listed in another document that contains a table of acronyms and definitions.

I was wondering if you could give me any advice on how I need to structure this? I'm not looking for you to write the code for me, just point me in the direction I need to be looking at!

I know how to do a find and replace and I know how to write to a table using VBA.

Is there a way to loop through the acronym table document while you are searching, or do I need to put every acronym and definition into the code itself as its own individual find and write to table cell (there are currently about 80 items in the list so this would be a bit of a task!)

I was ideally hoping to come up with a solution that would allow people to add acronyms to the definition table without having to change the code (for instance if there were specific acronyms for certain projects).

Thanks for any help!

Liz