Macro to number sentences

tjf816 · #1 02-15-2017, 01:19 PM

Hi,
Is it possible to code a macro to find and replace instances of punctuation (i.e., periods, exclamation marks, and question marks) with highlighted text that says "Sentence #X" with X being an auto-generated number?

I'm sorry I can't provide my own attempt at coding it as I have no experience coding. Thank you for your time and patience.

TJ

macropod · #2 02-15-2017, 03:11 PM

That's not possible with VBA, the reason being that VBA's idea of a sentence is non-grammatical. 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 count as one sentence; for VBA it counts as 5 sentences.

tjf816 · #3 02-16-2017, 06:10 AM

Hi,

Thank you for your prompt reply. Even if it adds sentence numbers to periods that don't mark the end of clauses, it would still be a great benefit to me. The amount of time it would take to delete the extraneous sentence numbers would be far shorter than it would take to add them in manually.

macropod · #4 02-16-2017, 01:42 PM

Try:

Code:

Sub Demo()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim i As Long, Rng As Range
With ActiveDocument.Range
  For i = 1 To .Sentences.Count
    With .Sentences(i)
      .InsertBefore " "
      Set Rng = .Characters.First
      Rng.Collapse wdCollapseStart
      .Fields.Add Range:=Rng, Type:=wdFieldSequence, _
        Text:="No.", PreserveFormatting:=False
    End With
  Next
End With
Set Rng = Nothing
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

With this code, the numbering is applied via SEQ fields. Had I hard-coded the numbers, you would have had to re-number every sentence after the first one that gets mis-numbered; this way simply deleting the offending numbers then updating the fields (e.g. Ctrl-A, F9) - which you can leave till all the offending numbers have been deleted - is all you need do.

andrew626 · #5 03-24-2017, 06:25 PM

Hi everyone
reference this question: Is it possible to search for the paragraph symbol at the end of the sentence rather than a full stop ?

And in general, is it possible to search for tabs, line/page breaks etc?

Many thanks
Andrew

macropod · #6 03-24-2017, 09:29 PM

You can search for spaces, tabs, paragraph breaks, manual line breaks, manual page breaks. Section breaks, etc. All of these - and more - are listed in Word's Find>Special dropdown.

andrew626 · #7 03-26-2017, 11:55 AM

Sorry, I should have been more specific. How are the paragraph symbols, tabs etc coded in a macro? (I guess not as ^p, ^t etc).

And if you use the paragraph symbol code, will the VBA macro then treat that selection as sentence?

Thanks

macropod · #8 03-26-2017, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrew626

Sorry, I should have been more specific.

Indeed. Let's start with you telling use what you're trying to achieve.

andrew626 · #9 03-27-2017, 02:11 PM

Just interested in learning how to use (maybe even write sometime) macros. Usually try to learn by modding something already written to do something else, so when I saw the macro you wrote for tjf, I thought it might be useful to play around with (only a dozen or so lines to understand) and renumber sentences by looking for the .¶ for instance, so as to avoid the . occurring as decimal points etc in your example sentence. So, purely a learning exercise.

macropod · #10 03-27-2017, 04:27 PM

Well, for paragraphs, you could simply replace '.Sentences' in the code in post #4 with '.Paragraphs', but that wouldn't make a lot of sense when Word already has auto-numbering for paragraphs. An alternative approach would be to use a macro-driven Find/Replace which, as I said, can be used for spaces, tabs, paragraph breaks, manual line breaks, manual page breaks. Section breaks, etc., but even that wouldn't be appropriate for paragraph numbering. That said, the Find/Replace code might be structured along the lines of the macro here: https://www.msofficeforums.com/word-...tml#post112574

andrew626 · #11 03-29-2017, 05:42 PM

ok, that's something to experiment with. Many thanks for the help.

Andrew

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