Hi, this is my first post and I'm a VBA novice, so please have patience with me.

I'm trying to find and highlight duplicate sentences in a Word 2013 document, and I found this script http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...-word-document.

Option Explicit

Sub Sample()

Dim MyArray() As String
Dim n As Long, i As Long
Dim Col As New Collection
Dim itm

n = 0
'~~> Get all the sentences from the word document in an array
For i = 1 To ActiveDocument.Sentences.Count

n = n + 1
ReDim Preserve MyArray(n)
MyArray(n) = Trim(ActiveDocument.Sentences(i).Text)

Next

'~~> Sort the array
SortArray MyArray, 0, UBound(MyArray)

'~~> Extract Duplicates
For i = 1 To UBound(MyArray)

If i = UBound(MyArray) Then Exit For
If InStr(1, MyArray(i + 1), MyArray(i), vbTextCompare) Then

On Error Resume Next
Col.Add MyArray(i), """" & MyArray(i) & """"
On Error GoTo 0

End If

Next i

'~~> Highlight duplicates
For Each itm In Col

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.HomeKey wdStory, wdMove
Selection.Find.Execute itm
Do Until Selection.Find.Found = False

Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdPink
Selection.Find.Execute

Loop

Next

End Sub

However, on certain documents I get the "Run-time error '5854': String parameter too long." error on the "Selection.Find.Execute itm" command. Yet, when I look at the offending sentence, although it has more than 255 characters, there are many more, longer sentences which the macro processes normally. There are no hidden characters / formatting marks, and there are duplicate sentences after that particular sentence.

If I break the offending sentence in two, the macro runs fine. Any idea how I should modify the script?

Kind regards,


George

The first thing you need to be aware of is that Word VBA's notion of what constitutes a sentence isn't what most readers would consider a sentence. For example, consider the following:

Mr. Smith spent $1,234.56 at Dr. John's Grocery Store, to buy: 10.25kg of potatoes; 10kg of avocados; and 15.1kg of Mrs. Green's Mt. Pleasant macadamia nuts.

For you and me, that would probably count as one sentence; for VBA it counts as 5... So what you're regarding as long sentences might not be the same as your macro's interpretation.

Given the above, I'd suggest a different approach, which is to use a two-dimensional array, with the 2nd dimension holding the 'sentence' index. Then, instead of using Find/Replace, simply retrieve the 'sentence' index when needed and highlight that 'sentence'. Just don't be surprised if some of the matches are only parts of grammatical sentences.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]