Hi there,

I wonder, in MS Word, if is possible to create a macro that can put a slash after every sentence (let's say right before a paragraph symbol) and at the same time duplicate the sentence (the whole sentence without the slash at its end). Is it even possible in text boxes and tables too?


I also tried to make use of regular expressions; unfortunately, it didn't work for text boxes and tables. I need to maintain the original formatting so I think the VBA might help.

For example:

Original formulation:
If you chose this option on your enrollment form, please allow up to 45 days for the premium withdrawal to be set up.

Target reconstruction should look like this:
If you chose this option on your enrollment form, please allow up to 45 days for the premium withdrawal to be set up./If you chose this option on your enrollment form, please allow up to 45 days for the premium withdrawal to be set up.

The point is that, upon running VBA, I need to hide the first (original) part in order to import and translate the file in a CAT tool with the target file being then exported and the hidden text deactivated; thus resulting in a bilingual document (with two languages divided by a slash).
Please is there any way out?

Thank you for any idea.

Irene

I doubt VBA would be much help with this, since VBA has no idea what a grammatical sentence is. For example, consider the following:
For you and me, that would count as one sentence; for VBA it counts as 5 sentences.

You can achieve most of what you want with a wildcard Find/Replace, where:
Find = ([!.\!\?;:]@[.\!\?;:])([ ^13])
Replace = \1/\1\2

Regarding tables, you might need to ensure the final sentence has the appropriate punctuation and there's at least a space character before the end-of-cell marker. Textbox final sentences would also require the appropriate punctuation.

With lists, the 'and' or 'or' following the penultimate entry won't be duplicated, nor will final entries followed by a comma.

Sentences containing decimal numbers will also trip up the Find/Replace, with only the portion following the decimal being duplicated.

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

It is pretty straightforward if you ignore sentences and do this at the paragraph level instead.

I would avoid a single slash as your language divider because it is reasonably likely to occur in the text itself and confuse your handling of the paragraphs. I would use a pair of them since it is way less likely to be part of the text being translated.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia