Macro to delete certain wording within curly brackets (braces)

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Hi, I have quite a lot of documents to amend and house style and one of the tasks is deleting all wording within {Note } and I wondered whether a macro would do the job. I have attached an example document. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks Shelley

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You don’t need a macro. Replace will do it with Wild Cards. I expect someone will give you what you need to put in. I do not know.

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I’ve just done a test on your Word Doc. On the Replace tab of find, click on more , then click on Use wildcards. The strings I entered are on the attachment. What you replace it with is up to you (you say words within the curly braces). Leave the replace field blank to replace the string with, well nothing.

46912-word

The back slashes are required because { and } are special characters

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Hi, I’ve tried what you have suggested and it hasn’t worked for me. Where it has {Note all the wording contained within the green back ground before the next } needs to be deleted which is why I thought a macro might be best placed for this type of deletion. Any ideas? Shelley

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OK, next iteration. You need to use {Note*} to find the relevant text. The capital of Note is required. Something to be aware of is that when it finds the string, it will put the final } at the top of the string (I’m assuming that the first time through you’ll do a find first before the replace to check it’s picking up the right text). Once you’re happy it’s doing what you want then a ‘replace all’ will be in order. When I did a replace all it removed 7 blocks of text – I assume that’s how many were in it.
Good luck!

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You can’t specify the background shading as a Find/Replace parameter, besides which, the content you want to delete doesn’t all have that shading (e.g. {Note … }).

The basic Find/Replace macro code you’d incorporate into your larger process would be something like:

Code:

  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "{Note*}"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
  End With

If the shading is an issue, another approach will be required.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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You can’t specify the background shading as a Find/Replace parameter, besides which, the content you want to delete doesn’t all have that shading (e.g. {Note … }).

The basic Find/Replace macro code you’d incorporate into your larger process would be something like:

Code:

  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "{Note*}"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
  End With

If the shading is an issue, another approach will be required.

Hi, many thanks for your responses to my query on this very much appreciated. I have managed to do a find and replace. There are a few places where the notes have not deleted and I can’t understand why. I’ve also added into the macro to delete the extra paragraphs. I attach an original document before I’ve run the macro and an updated document where I have run the macro. Thanks. Shelley

Code:

Sub DPU_deletenotesdwf()
‘
‘ DPU_deletenotesdwf Macro
‘
‘
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = “{Note*}”
        .Replacement.Text = “”
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchWildcards = True
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    Selection.WholeStory
    Selection.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = wdAlignParagraphJustify
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = “[^13]{2,}”
  .Replacement.Text = “^p”
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
       .Forward = True
  .MatchWildcards = True
  .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

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Shelley, I found one where it didn’t delete completely (under Charge) and that didn’t because there’s an embedded {} in the note – and neither my, or the macro’s methods can cope with that as they would terminate the find after 1s}

{Note
Charge{chargeNum IsMoreThan 1s}
List here those financial charges that are intended to be discharged on or before completion, so that the Property will be sold free of them. The definition is used primarily in relation to clause 8.
}

Doing it my way you would have to check for those sorts of constructs. Perhaps Paul would be able to add such a thing to his macro (that’s beyond my pay-scale!)

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I know what you mean about pay scale, I’m just a secretary trying to fathom this out with no support from IT so I really do appreciate all the help I get from here its made a massive difference to how I can get the mountain of work done and I can’t thank everyone enough really. Thanks for your help. Shelley

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There is no practical way of extending the range to accommodate nested braces other than testing the found range, checking for any opening braces after ‘Note’ then extending by however many times as are necessary until one ends up with a matching count of opening and closing braces. That would require quite a different approach than what till now was a fairly simple Find/Replace.

PS: Shelley, I’d have thought by now – especially after all the code you’ve been given (or at least helped with) – you’d have learnt to do better than just use the macro recorder. All that ‘Selection’ stuff makes my eyes water.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Paul, I couldn’t get your macro to work so had to just do a quick fix for the day to get the work done but will revise my macro try yours again and tidy it all up as you are quite right it is very messy. Thanks for your help. Shelley

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Try:

Code:

Sub Demo()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "{Note*}"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Format = False
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Execute
  End With
  Do While .Find.Found
    Do While Len(Replace(.Text, "{", ""))  Len(Replace(.Text, "}", ""))
      .MoveEndUntil "}", wdForward: .End = .End + 1
    Loop
    .Delete
    .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
    .Find.Execute
  Loop
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Paul, many thanks for the revised macro, it works great. Many thanks. Shelley

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