MS Word 2010, Find & Replace with Wildcards

Quite often I need to re-format citations in my texts, i.e., missing brackets around the year of a publication. In MS Word I simlpy solve such issues with the find and replace option using wildcards. I.e. for the issue with years without brackets:

short cut crtl-h
then put ([1-2][0-9]{3}) in the find-box and
(^&) in the replace box
hit 'replace' and you're done

The find string will search for any 4-digit number starting with 1 or 2 followed by 3 digits between 0 and 9 and will be replaced by the same number put inbetween round brackets. Note that the brackets in the find-string denote a token which then can be referenced by the string ^& in the replace step.

Add Comments in MS-Word using VBA

This VBA procedure (1) Searches words ("Str1", "Str2",..) and adds commentboxes to it and (2) changes the initials used in the box:

Sub CommentBox()

    Dim range As range
    Dim i As Long
    Dim TargetList
    Dim cm As Comment
    
    TargetList = Array("Str1", "Str2")
    
    For i = 0 To UBound(TargetList)
    
    Set range = ActiveDocument.range
    
    With range.Find
    .Text = TargetList(i)
    .Format = True
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = True
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
        
    Do While .Execute(Forward:=True) = True

        Set cm = range.Comments.Add(range:=range, Text:="Hallo")
        cm.Author = "InternalName"
        cm.Initial = "Initials"
        
        Loop
    
    End With

    Next

With ActiveDocument.Styles("Kommentartext").Font
        .Size = 12
        .Bold = True
        .Italic = True
        .Color = wdColorBlue
End With

End Sub

Reproducible Research: Export Regression Table to MS Word

Here's a quick tip for anyone wishing to export results, say a regression table, from R to MS Word:

Match Words in MS-Word File with Words in another File and Apply New Format Using VBA

I present a macro that I wrote for re-formatting scientific species names (it is common to use italic fonts for that) in a Word file. Therefore I used a database of central European species names - this is compared with the words in my file and matches are re-formatted...

Fast Correction of Typos in MS Word with VBA

..I use a macro to quickly fix misspelled words. More precisely, the misspelled word is replaced by the first suggestion from the spelling checker. The macro is called by hitting "strg+shift+q" just after a typo occurred.