How can I replace a Microsoft Word character style within a range/selection in VBA?

Question

I'm working on a Word 2007 template with a macro that will apply character styles to the selected text. It seemed that the Find/Replace feature would be a good place to start, but I think I've found a bug/limitation that prevents the macro from working as desired.

Here's my vba code:

Sub restyleSelection()
    Dim r As Range
    Set r = Selection.Range
    With r.Find
        .Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Default Paragraph Font")
        .Text = ""
        .Replacement.Text = ""
        .Replacement.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Emphasis")
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindStop
        .Format = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
        .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    End With
End Sub

If I create a test document that contains a few paragraphs and select a few words in one of the paragraphs, then run the macro, the "Emphasis" style is applied not only to the selection, but beyond the end of the selection to the end of the document.

This behavior is the same using the actual GUI Find/Replace tool.

My question is: How can I overcome this bug/limitation and apply the character style ONLY within the selection/range?

A little more information:
What I really need the macro to do is apply certain formatting to the entire selection while maintaining the existing character styles in the selection. For example, if the selected text contains the Bold character style, the Italic character style, and the rest of it is Default Paragraph Font, the macro should replace Bold with "Revised Bold", replace "Italic" with "Revised Italic", and replace "Default Paragraph Font" with "Revised". That way, when I use the companion macro to "undo" the action of this macro, the original character styles (Bold, Italic, Default Paragraph Font) can be replaced.

SOLVED:
Here is the solution I finally arrived at:

Sub applyNewRevisedText
    Dim r As Range          ' Create a new Range object
    Set r = Selection.Range ' Assign the current selection to the Range
    Dim rng As Range
    For Each rng In r.Words
        Set rngStyle = rng.Style
        Select Case rngStyle
        Case "Bold"
            rng.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("New/Revised Text Bold")
        Case "Italic"
            rng.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("New/Revised Text Emphasis")
        Case Else
            rng.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("New/Revised Text")
        End Select
    Next rng
End Sub

Justin Self · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-06 16:02:02Z

2

To answer your direct question

My question is: How can I overcome this bug/limitation and apply the character style ONLY within the selection/range?

Does this not meet the need?:

Sub restyleSelection()
    Selection.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Emphasis")
End Sub

EDIT:

Ok, based on your comment, what about something like:

Dim rng As Range
  For Each rng In Selection.Words
    If rng.Bold 'do something
  Next rng

.Words will break up each word in the range into a collection of ranges. Then you can perform styling on each individual word based on its current style.

edited Jan 6, 2012 at 16:02

answered Jan 6, 2012 at 0:19

Justin Self

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5 Comments

PaulBurton0 Over a year ago

Yes that works brilliantly if the entire selection is to be styled with "Emphasis." What I tried to convey (not very well perhaps) in my "A little more information" section is that I need to do an analysis of the selection and apply various character styles depending on the character styles that are present in the selection. That said, your solution is ideal if I can find a way to split a selection that is an aggregation of character styles into it's constituent parts, then apply the correct style to each part, and then put it back together.

PaulBurton0 Over a year ago

That definitely has me on the right track. The only thing that's holding me back now is that If rng.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Default Paragraph Font") doesn't seem to recognize base paragraph styles without character formatting. I suppose I can iterate through the 30-odd paragraph styles in the template if I need to and apply the proper chracter style as needed, but is there a way to find out whether rng.Style is a paragraph style or a character style? I see that there's a Type:=wdStyleTypeCharacter parameter for the Styles Object, but is there such a thing for the Style property?

PaulBurton0 Over a year ago

OK, I restructured the macro a bit to use a Select Case statement to apply the appropriate character styles to the words that already have character styles, and then the Case Else applies the appropriate character style to anything that falls through (that is, does not have any character styles applied). You did in fact answer my question, I was just being lazy and looking for free additional answers :-) Thanks a lot.

Justin Self Over a year ago

no problem. Glad it got you where you needed. Perhaps you could post an example of your final solution for future people in need?

PaulBurton0 Over a year ago

OK, I appended an example of the working solution to the question.

Marcel · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-23 20:54:27Z

I had a slightly different problem and solved it without resorting to a loop. The code works NOT for text which is formatted directly, but it does work for text which is formatted with character styles.

Consider a part of the text being selected, either including or not including strings to which already some character style has been assigned.

If within the selected range no character style has been assigned yet, after the search the start of the selection won't be the same. If however at least one character style has been assigned the start of the selection will be the same as before the search. Now you can treat those two cases separately. In both cases all characters within the selection to which no character style had been assigned previously will now be linked to "myStyle".

Vst_Style = "myStyle"

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Add Name:="Range"
V_BMstart = Selection.Range.Start
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Default Paragraph Font")
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles(Vst_Style)
With Selection.Find
    .Text = ""
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Format = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
If Selection.Range.Start <> V_BMstart Then
    Selection.GoTo what:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="Range"
    Selection.Style = Vst_Style 
Else
    Selection.GoTo what:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="Range"
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll 
End If

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