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Old 11-28-2017, 01:45 PM
qubie qubie is offline Windows 7 64bit Office 2007
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Default Regular Expression Syntax to Search for Alternative Words

Greetings,

I have looked into this at length before, and found no solid answers.

I am working with records that include repetitive verbiage except that one phrase may be slightly different from record to record. My overall purpose is to make use of a macro that isolates the unique phrase.

Here is a greatly-simplified example:

The red bicycle had a flat tire but Bart fixed it on the third attempt.
The red bicycle had a flat tire but Bart fixed it on the first attempt.
The red bicycle had a flat tire but Bart fixed it on the ninth attempt.
The red bicycle had a flat tire but Bart fixed it on the twelfth attempt.

I desire to structure a single macro command that will search my content for first or third or ninth or twelfth, instead of creating four separate commands that look for each distinct word seriatim. If I undertake the latter for the content with which I am working, the macro is likely to be painfully long.

What is the Word 2007-specific, wild-card syntax for accomplishing a search for alternative words? Does such a thing exist?

I am aware there is a method to search for alternative letters within a string, but that does not address this specific problem. If something similar exists for whole words, I have not discovered it.

I appreciate your kind feedback.

Thanks and regards,

q.
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