text - Word VBA: Scan document for string, copy it to list, and move to next occurrence

Question

My Word document contains the text:

The_1234:

(some stuff)

The_1235:

(some stuff)

The_1236:

(some stuff)

............................

I want to be able to search the Word document for the string "The_" and somehow attach the next 4 characters after the string (i.e. "1234") to the string. Then, I will copy/paste the whole selected string "The_1234" into a list, and go to the next occurrence, "The_1235", and so on. To create a list containing all the strings "The_1234, The_1235, The_1236".

So far I have:

Sub FindThe()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
        With Selection.Find
            .ClearFormatting
            .Text = "The_"
            .Execute Forward:=True
        End With
End Sub

Answer 1

If your text follows the pattern indicated in your question you can use wildcards to find the full text. The code below looks for the pattern 'The_' followed by 4 numbers.

Note that this code does not select anything. You work with findRange which gets redefined to the found text each time a match is found.

Sub FindWithWildcards
   Dim findRange As Word.Range

   Set findRange = ActiveDocument.Range

   With findRange.Find
      .ClearFormatting
      .Text = "The_[0-9]{4}"
      .MatchWildcards = True
      '[add any other find properties here]
      Do While .Execute(Forward:=True) = True
         findRange.Copy
         '[add further actions here]
         findRange.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
      Loop
   End With

End Sub