Highlighting dates already formatted in existing text

[Lumber-jack]

HI I am not expert at macros.

My problem is that I have indexes with thousands of entries. Each is prefixed with a date of the form "month(space)day(space)year" with the months as abbreviations ( jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug sept, oct, nov, dec); the day as numeric (eg 1, 10, 30), and the year in full (eg 1870, 1881, 1900).

I want to highlight ( ie Bold ) all these dates automatically throughout out the existing text without changing the font in any other way.



I do not mind if a date entry of the same format but elsewhere in the text gets highlighted in the process.

How can this be done using for example a macro? or am I pipe dreaming?

Thanks, L-j

[macropod]

You can do without the need for a macro, using a wildcard Find/Replace.

You appear to be working with you're working with US-format dates, so try:
Find = <[JFMASOND][anuryebchpilgstmov]{2,8} [0-9]{1,2} [12][0-9]{3}>
Replace = ^&
and setting the replacement font format to bold.

For UK-format dates (d mmm yyyy), the Find/Replace expression would be:
Find = <[0-9]{1,2} [JFMASOND][anuryebchpilgstmov]{2,8} [12][0-9]{3}>
Replace = ^&
and setting the replacement font format to bold.

[Lumber-jack]

Thanks Paul, for all your help!
L-j