Find Replace - With wild cards

Hi
I have a small issue.
I'd like to find occurances of square brackets [], or this brackets (), in a word document and check if number or alphabet is immediately preceeding or suffixing it without space and if so insert one space.

Eg. my house[VBF]is in china
This I want to change it to my house [VBF] is in china

Eg. my house(VBF)is in china
This I want to change it to my house (VBF) is in china

yes I used the wild card option in more..
I believe it goes something like this in Find section: [A-Za-z0-9]\(
I get struck up in the Replace section:???????

Thanks in advance...:afrog:

patience is not the ability to wait but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting :wave::wave:

several weeks...still no solution leave alone response :eek:
unbelievable :rolleyes:
Also I discovered its something to do with Regular expressions...:wave:

i remember trying to do this some time ago, but i think my internet crashed or some such

i believe you would have to use a VBA procedure to do this, only way i figured was to use replace to put space next to each bracket (before or after), then replace double spaces with single space, either in all instance, or when next to each bracket

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use replace to put space next to each bracket (before or after),

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That exactly is the issue...

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check if number or alphabet is immediately preceeding or suffixing it without space and if so insert one space.

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how to add the space without deleting the existing character (num/alphabet) ???

Code:

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To use less brain power, an easy way is to replace
"[" with " ["
"]" with "] "
"(" with " ("
")" with ") "
and then at the end
"  " with " "

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anhn that was good response....but...

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check if number or alphabet is immediately preceeding or suffixing it is without space and if so insert one space

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Try it, it will work: Not just number or alphabet but if not-a-space.

I'll try..sure...also let me know how to add space before numbers...

if you really need to only add the space where character is number or letter (so not punctuation or other brackets, or like!@#$$%^&* etc), the you would need to use VBA to find each bracket, check the character before (or after), then add space as appropriate, then find next bracket and repeat process, you would need to use instr to do this, otherwise loop through every character, to determine if it is a bracket

you can not do what you originally specified using words find /replace method

The current issue is slightly away from the main topic...but related...so please bear with me...

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only add the space where character is number

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Yes, but only if it already has no space.

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so not punctuation

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They are taken care of..
Take a look at this...

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the age of the building is200years.

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so here we need to search out the whole number sequence in this eg. its 200 and add space before & after.
Other combinations would be

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the age of the building is 200years.

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Here we add space only after 200

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the age of the building is200 years.

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Here we add space only before 200

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The current issue is slightly away from the main topic...but related..

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you can test this, it should do for both

vb Code:

Dim char As Range, chars As String, alpha As String, notnums as string
 
alpha = "ABCDEFGHIJKLNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789"
notnums "ABCDEFGHIJKLNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
 
For Each char In ThisDocument.Content.Characters
    Select Case char
        Case "(", "["
            If InStr(1, alpha, ThisDocument.Characters(char.Start), vbTextCompare) > 0 Then char.InsertBefore " "
        Case ")", "]"
            If InStr(1, alpha, ThisDocument.Characters(char.End + 1), vbTextCompare) > 0 Then char.InsertAfter " "
        Case 0 To 9
            If InStr(1, notnums, ThisDocument.Characters(char.Start), vbTextCompare) > 0 Then char.InsertBefore " "
            If InStr(1, notnums, ThisDocument.Characters(char.End + 1), vbTextCompare) > 0 Then char.InsertAfter " "
 
    End Select
Next

minimal testing done, as checks every character in the document, it may be too slow, but it does test for all brackets and numbers, you can add any other required characters to strings for them to be included for spaces to be inserted

I added your code in a sub just for the 0-9 case (at present) and ran it..nothing happened. Then I put the break point at "Case 0-9" and found that the loop does not enter the line next to it....

Code:

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Dim char As Range, chars As String, alpha As String, notNums As String

    alpha = "ABCDEFGHIJKLNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789"
    notNums = "ABCDEFGHIJKLNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
   
    For Each char In ThisDocument.Content.Characters
        Select Case char
            Case 0 To 9
                If InStr(1, notNums, ThisDocument.Characters(char.Start), vbTextCompare > 0) Then char.InsertBefore " "
                If InStr(1, notNums, ThisDocument.Characters(char.End + 1), vbTextCompare > 0) Then char.InsertAfter " "
        End Select
    Next

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BTW

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notNums = "ABCDEFGHIJKLNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"

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did not have "=" so I added it...

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did not have "=" so I added it...

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typo

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Then I put the break point at "Case 0-9" and found that the loop does not enter the line next to it....

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works for me

My logic in post#5 is:

1. Always add a space before "[" and "(" regardless they are preceeded by a space or not.
2. Always add a space after "]" and ")" regardless they are followed by a space or not.
3. In both cases, if a space (before or after) already existed, it will become double spaces; so just replace all double spaces with single space.

Easy!

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My logic in post#5 is:

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basically what i put in post #3, which did not completely fill the original request and did not cover the additional requirement in posts #8 /10

Dear Anhn & west,
I did understand what you were saying and already implemented it in the same order as suggested by you....Thanks for your expert guidance.

Ive included a sample file for your quick reference.

In each word block (I believe its called simply word in Office VBA) one must check for series of alpahbets or numbers. If there exist no space after the end of series then we must add a space.
eg. This document has200pages.
Here has200pages is a block. First we identify the start series, in the present case 'has'
this is followed by numbers ie. '200',
there is no intervening space so we add one space
this is followed by numbers ie. 'pages',
here again there is no intervening space so we add one space

Imp: Existing data must not be deleted

guys any more inputs.........

as my testing for the code in post #11 appeared to work correctly i do not understand why it did not work for you