Hi there,



I am getting very odd results with the following wildcard search in VBA
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "[.,;:-\?\!^13^34]"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute

The intention was to find any of these characters:
. , ; : - ? ! [CR] and "

However, this search is also finding the "=" sign, even though its not in the list of search characters I have requested! Any ideas? I suspect I have encountered numerous similar instabilities in Selection.Find in Word. Does this function have documented issues?

As an aside, is it ok to put ^n1^n2^n3 ... in order to search for ascii characters n1, n2, n3 ...

Thanks

Mike

Because of :-\?, your Find expression say, amongst other things, to find all characters between : and ?. That includes :, ;, <, =, >, and ?. You need to use \-, as in:
.Text = "[.,;:\-\?\!^13^34]"
And, yes, you can use ^n, where n is a number, to look for ASCII characters - but for the most part you can also use the characters themselves.

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

Awesome, thanks. So I put - and should have put \- since - is a special character

Thanks a lot

Mike

PS: Do I need to mark this as solved?

Done & dusted.

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