Replacing a text with another in multiple documents.

[marvin_g14]

I'm sure it has been discussed before and I am really sorry to bring it up. At my job I have to edit about 400 documents every month about 2-3 times for each document. So far I've figured out how to replace text with the same texts (ex.dates and times) but I have to change names for every document so far I've just used the find and replace for every document but my job load is getting bigger and bigger.

So point is I am trying to change the documents who all have <names> in it with the person's name whose document belongs to. In one simple click. For example one document i want replaced with Mr. Henriquez another with Mr. Johnson so on and so on. A point towards the right direction would be greatly appreciated. or any help.



Ps. I have the most minimum experience with VBA but am always willing to learn.

THank you!

[westconn1]

is it all documents in one folder, or all documents with some standard naming?

how do you tell which documents you want to edit?

you can use DIR to find matching documents, open the document, do the find /replace, close and save changes, DIR to find next matching

[marvin_g14]

yeah, they're all in one folder, for example every document represents a person and what he/she did throughout the day. I have a set of pre written notes with "NAMES" in it to represent the person for example (Throughout the day I saw 'NAMES' interacting with others and socializing.) the 'NAMES' is where the persons actual name would go. I copy and paste into each individual document the names, so i have to do this about 1300 times(amount of monthly documents I am in charge of) so I've become a little crazy doing this month in an out. So myquestion is, is there a way to have the document automatically replace 'NAMES' with the person whose document it belongs to?

Thanks for your attention and time.

[westconn1]

is there a way to have the document automatically replace 'NAMES'

yes, but i am not sure i fully comprehend how you determine which name to replace with, there is nothing very complicated about the code, just which name to replace with i do not follow

[marvin_g14]

That is exactly where I've hit a wall. the 'names' would have to be replaced with whoevers document it is in. or am I just out of luck on this one?

I need to find out if there is a method where I can get it to determine it on its own. to avoid having to use the find and replace every time I have to switch NAMES out with the persons name.

[westconn1]

I need to find out if there is a method where I can get it to determine it on its own

you still have given no indication how you can determine the name to switch, how am i supposed to guess?
you can have some sort of lookup table or whatever once you can provide some parameter to indicate the correct name

[marvin_g14]

Hmmm... again thanks for giving this your attention. I determine whose name to write in by the file name; Doe,John.doc is the file so i would write 'Mr. Doe' where 'Names' goes. Does that answer your question?

and how would this look up table work? and I wouldn't know how to indicate parameters so that the correct name is used.

Sorry again for the frustration this has caused.

[westconn1]

Does that answer your question?

i guess i could work with that

you can try like

mypath = "c:\test\"     'change to suit
fname = dir(mypath & "*.doc")
do while len(fname) > 0 
  set doc = documents.open(mypath & fname)
  pos =  instr(fname, ",")
  if pos > 0 then
    repl = "Mr " & left(fname, pos - 1)
    doc.Content.Find.Execute "<names>", , , , , , , , , repl, wdReplaceAll
    doc.close true
  end if
  fname = dir
loop

this would assume that all clients are male, that all doc file names in the folder are in the format "Doe,Fred.doc"
filenames not containing "," will be ignored
i did not test this

[marvin_g14]

Nothing has been changed after placing this code? Am I doing something wrong? could it be possible that everything is on a network drive? I've been at it for hours and came up to zip.

[mypath = "Z:\SOCIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT\Social Work Summary Notes\2013 Social Work Summary Notes\January 2013 SW Notes"     'change to suit
fname = Dir(mypath & "*.doc")
Do While Len(fname) > 0
  Set doc = Documents.Open(mypath & fname)
  pos = InStr(fname, ",")
  If pos > 0 Then
    repl = "Mr. " & Left(fname, pos - 1)
    doc.Content.Find.Execute "<Mr.Ms.>", , , , , , , , , repl, wdReplaceAll
    doc.Close True
  End If
  fname = Dir
Loop
End Sub]

[marvin_g14]

clients are both male and female but I can seperate them into different folder and just change the 'Mr.' to 'Ms.' and precisely all files are format'Johnson, Max.doc'

[marvin_g14]

I receive an outside invalid procedure error message.

[westconn1]

the code snippet i posted would need to be placed inside a procedure (SUB)
possibly the click event for a command button, depending what you want, to start the code running