Macro help, please? Switch period to comma, or vice versa.

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A surprising amount of the work I edit has one particular quirky error. Either run-on sentences with commas where periods would have been better, or choppy fragments where the periods ought to be commas.

I’d love to have a Word 2010 macro that lets me drop my insertion point next to a comma or a period and invoke the macro. The macro would find the current mark and then replace it with the other.

It would be extra nice if the macro didn’t mind whether the IP was immediately before, or after, the offending mark. It would in either case find the adjacent mark and then switch it with the other mark.

Does anyone know how to help me? (“Help me” as in write the macro for me !!)
Doug

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The following macro will swap periods & commas for any selected range:

Code:

Sub RePunctuate()
Dim i As Long
With Selection
  For i = 1 To .Words.Count
    With .Words(i)
      If .Characters.First = "." Then
        .Characters.First = ","
      ElseIf .Characters.First = "," Then
        .Characters.First = "."
      End If
    End With
  Next
End With
End Sub

Note: The macro only looks at what is selected; if the selection is just the IP and that is before, or after, the offending mark, it won’t be processed.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Macropod’s code goes very close to doing what you asked. It actually can work with only an insertion point but not if it is positioned at the end of the paragraph which is where I would expect you are trying to run this macro most often.

The following should be more tolerant of where the insertion point is positioned but likely will give you bad results if you are actually making a selection which includes both commas and full stops.

Code:

Sub RePunctuate2()
  Dim i As Long, aRng As Range
  With Selection
    Set aRng = ActiveDocument.Range(Start:=.Range.Start, End:=.Range.End)
  End With
  If aRng.Start > 0 Then aRng.Start = aRng.Start – 1
  If aRng.End  0 Then
    aRng.Text = Replace(aRng.Text, “,”, “.”)
  Else
    aRng.Text = Replace(aRng.Text, “.”, “,”)
  End If
End Sub

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That gives me an idea. The code I posted can be made to work with the insertion point by adding:

Code:

  If .Type = wdSelectionIP Then
    If .Start  ActiveDocument.Range.Start Then .Start = .Start - 1
    If .Start  ActiveDocument.Range.End Then .End = .End + 1
  End If

after ‘With Selection’

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Macropod and Andrew — thanks very much! Doug

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