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: Highlighting Duplicate Words.

Highlighting Duplicate Words

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 26, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Joe is an author and he has some ideas for using Word macros to help with his proofreading. One of the macros he wants to build is for finding duplicate words in sentences and paragraphs. He wants to exclude the common necessary words like "the," "a," etc. Joe would like to highlight the duplicate words in a document so he can examine their use and make appropriate changes.

How you go about this depends, really, on how you want to approach the task. For instance, if you want to simply look for duplicate words that are side-by-side, then Word should do that already for you; the grammar checker takes care of marking those duplicate words.

If you, instead, want to find excessive instances of a particular word, then you can use Find and Replace to highlight them. On the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box you can enter the word you want to highlight, click the Highlight All Items check box, and then click Find All. Word selects all instances of the Word and you can then use the Highlighter tool to highlight all of them.

Finally, if you want a macro that will step through each paragraph of the document (or each sentence of a document) and look for multiple instances of any given word, then that is a much more complex issue. Stepping through either paragraphs or sentences is not a huge problem; just use either the Paragraphs collection or the Sentences collection in the macro. The bigger problem is dealing with text variations. For instance, does the word "dog" match the word "dogs" or, even, the word "dogged." Without a firm understanding of what, exactly, you want to consider as "matching," your macro can get rather cumbersome.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6957) 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: Highlighting Duplicate Words.

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Printing a Single Column in Multiple Columns

Ever printed out a worksheet only to find that you have text only at the left side of each page? You can use more of each ...

Discover More

Saving Embedded Images to Individual Files

Word has long allowed you to embed pictures or images in the documents you create. What if you want to get those pictures ...

Discover More

Expanding a Custom Dictionary

Does Word tell you that your custom dictionary is full? It might not actually be full, but even if it is, you can add ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

More WordTips (menu)

Understanding Hard and Soft Returns

Did you know that there are different types of returns in Word? Here's the inside scoop.

Discover More

Entering a Page Break from the Keyboard

Need to force Word to move text to the top of the next page? It's easy when you use the keyboard shortcut for a page break.

Discover More

Single-Character Fractions

Some fractions Word automatically converts to single characters, some it doesn't. Here's why that happens and what you ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 7 - 7?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.