add parentheses to a letter

steve8778 · #1 11-16-2016, 08:44 AM

Hi, I am very new to this. I have to type a lot of letters & numbers in parentheses and it's cumbersome to have to do it manually.

I'm trying to make a macro (or something similar) in word where I press a button and a letter/ number, then the said letter/number gets put in parentheses. Basically, it would work the same way as pressing shift + a letter to capitalize it.

a3B1 ---> (a)(3)(B)(1)

The only information I could find so far was placing parentheses around highlighted text, but that doesn't really help because the parentheses goes around the whole text instead of each individual letter. If its possible to make something that affect each letter that would work perfectly fine too, I am not picky

Please help!!

Literalman · #2 11-16-2016, 11:03 AM

You should be able to record a macro (under the Developer tab) that goes something like this (with > representing the right arrow key): (>)(>)(>)(>)

Then put the cursor in front of a3B1 or any other group of four characters and run the macro.

macropod · #3 11-16-2016, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve8778

Hi, I am very new to this. I have to type a lot of letters & numbers in parentheses and it's cumbersome to have to do it manually.....

a3B1 ---> (a)(3)(B)(1)

Your description suggests you're creating multi-level lists, for which you should be using Word's multi-level list numbering tools and properly-defined paragraph Styles to associate with them. With that approach, your paragraphs can be numbered automatically (parentheses included) and, should you need to insert/delete/promote/demote one, all the numbering will auto-adjust.

If you're wedded to your present approach, you could use some wildcard Find/Replace expressions to apply the parentheses. For example:
Find = ([a-z])([0-9])([A-Z])([0-9])
Replace = (\1)(\2)(\3)(\4)
would changed any string like a3B1 to (a)(3)(B)(1) - throughout your document or for just a selected range. No macros required.

steve8778 · #4 11-16-2016, 06:19 PM

Thank you both!! I do the multi list already but this was for sections in laws.

Literalman's suggestion worked perfectly!

I seriously appreciate the help

-steve

macropod · #5 11-16-2016, 07:42 PM

While not wanting to pour scorn on macro suggestion, you'll soon find it's rather inflexible. The following rendition will add parentheses to any selected alpha-numeric string:

Code:

Sub AddParens()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim i As Long
With Selection.Words.First
  If (InStr(.Text, ")") > 0) Or (InStr(.Text, "(") > 0) Then Exit Sub
  Do While .Characters.Last Like "[ ,.:;?!'" & Chr(7) & "-" & Chr(13) & "]"
    .End = .End - 1
  Loop
  For i = Len(.Text) To 1 Step -1
    With .Characters(i)
      .InsertAfter ")"
      .InsertBefore "("
    End With
  Next
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Just don't try it with multi-character roman numerals...

If you assign the macro to a keyboard shortcut, it'll be ready for action without the need to go through the Developer tab, etc.

steve8778 · #6 11-17-2016, 07:33 AM

haha pour away. I freely admit that I have no understanding of coding (unfortunately)

I will try this out, thanks!

steve8778 · #7 11-17-2016, 07:50 AM

Works like a charm! Thank you so much for the help. You have no idea how much this will help!

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