Regex in Word

 By default Regular Expression option is disabled in Word, to enable:

1. Press ALT+F11 in Word

2. Go to Tools > References as shown below.

3. Now put a tick on "Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5" option and then press oh as shown below.

4. Now onward you can create a RegExp object in your VBA script. You can verify it be searching in object data base as explained below. View > Object Browser ( Or press F2) , as shown below.

and search for RegExp object

5. The RegExp object uses regular expressions to match a pattern. The following properties are provided by RegExp. These properties set the pattern to compare the strings that are passed to the RegExp instance:

a. Pattern: A string that defines the regular expression.

b. IgnoreCase: A Boolean property that indicates whether you must test the regular expression against all possible matches in a string.

c. Global: Sets a Boolean value or returns a Boolean value that indicates whether a pattern must match all the occurrences in a whole search string, or whether a pattern must match just the first occurrence.

RegExp provides the following methods to determine whether a string matches a particular pattern of a regular expression:

d. Test: Returns a Boolean value that indicates whether the regular expression can successfully be matched against the string.

e. Execute: Returns a MatchCollection object that contains a Match object for each successful match.

Sample code:

Function TestRegExp(myPattern As String, myString As String)
   'Create objects.
   Dim objRegExp As RegExp
   Dim objMatch As Match
   Dim colMatches   As MatchCollection
   Dim RetStr As String

   ' Create a regular expression object.
   Set objRegExp = New RegExp

   'Set the pattern by using the Pattern property.
   objRegExp.Pattern = myPattern

   ' Set Case Insensitivity.
   objRegExp.IgnoreCase = True

   'Set global applicability.
   objRegExp.Global = True

   'Test whether the String can be compared.
   If (objRegExp.Test(myString) = True) Then

   'Get the matches.
    Set colMatches = objRegExp.Execute(myString)   ' Execute search.

    For Each objMatch In colMatches   ' Iterate Matches collection.
      RetStr = RetStr & "Match found at position "
      RetStr = RetStr & objMatch.FirstIndex & ". Match Value is '"
      RetStr = RetStr & objMatch.Value & "'." & vbCrLf
    Next
   Else
    RetStr = "String Matching Failed"
   End If
   TestRegExp = RetStr
End Function

Another sample code to replace all e-mail addresses in all document ranges:

Sub RegexFindAndReplace()
    Dim regExp As Object
    Dim doc As Document
    Dim rng As Range
    
    Set regExp = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
    Set doc = ActiveDocument
    
    With regExp
        .Pattern = "\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,}\b" 'regex pattern for email address
        .Global = True 'match all occurrences
        .IgnoreCase = True 'ignore case sensitivity
    End With
    
    For Each rng In doc.StoryRanges 'loop through all story ranges in the document
        rng.Text = regExp.Replace(rng.Text, "[email protected]") 'replace email address with dummy text
    Next rng
    
End Sub

Word Macro to Remove Highlight and Shading from Text

 Remove highlighting and shading (for instance, to remove highlighting from Finereader OCR):

Sub RemoveShadingandHighlights()
  Selection.Font.Shading.Texture = wdTextureNone
  Selection.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = wdColorWhite
  Selection.Shading.ForegroundPatternColor = wdColorWhite
  Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
End Sub

Remove highlighting:

Sub RemoveAllHighlights()
  Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
End Sub

Remove shading: 

 Sub RemoveShading()
  Selection.Font.Shading.Texture = wdTextureNone
  Selection.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = wdColorWhite
  Selection.Shading.ForegroundPatternColor = wdColorWhite
End Sub