Is there a MS Word wildcard for frequency?

Question

I learning how to use Microsoft Word wildcards and codes to help me in my position as a medical editor. A big part of my job is submitting manuscripts to medical journals for review, and each journal has very specific requirements.

Most of the journals we submit manuscripts to require that medical terms/phrases be abbreviated only if they are used three or more times. For example, the term “Overall Survival” can be abbreviated to OS if the term is referenced at least three times in the text. If the text only mentions “Overall Survival” once or twice, it is preferred that the term remain expanded, and it should not be abbreviated to OS.

We have been using the PerfectIt system, by Intelligent Editing. This Word widget scans for abbreviations that are only used once and will flag them for our review, but does not pick up if an abbreviation is only used twice in the selected text. We are hoping to find some solution (my thought would be some sort of wildcard search or macro) that will be able to detect if an abbreviation is used only one or two times.

I saw this similar post on stackoverflow, but it seemed to do with code. I will need this to be on a company computer that I do not have administrative access to, and furthermore, I know nothing about code. I appreciate any help, guidance, or directions for further research!

Thank you!

Edit: I could use a wildcard search to make all of the two+ capitalized letters highlighted by using <[A-Z]{2,}>, then formatting them as highlighted, if this would help with any macros.

Answer 1

For any given abbreviation, you could use a macro like:

Sub Demo()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim i As Long
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = InputBox("What is the Text to Find")
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = True
    .MatchWholeWord = True
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    .Execute
  End With
  Do While .Find.Found
    i = i + 1
    .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
    .Find.Execute
  Loop
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
MsgBox i & " instances found."
End Sub

For PC macro installation & usage instructions, see: http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm

For Mac macro installation & usage instructions, see: https://wordmvp.com/Mac/InstallMacro.html

Answer 2

Provided there's at least one occurrence of the abbreviation in parens you could use a macro like the following. The macro checks the contents of a document for upper-case/numeric parenthetic abbreviations it then looks backwards to try to determine what term they abbreviate. For example:

World Wide Web (WWW)

Naturally, given the range of acronyms in use, it’s not foolproof and, if a match isn’t made, the preceding sentence (in VBA terms) is captured so the user can edit the output. A table is then built at the end of the document, which is then searched for all references to the acronym (other than for the definition) and the counts and page numbers added to the table.

Note that the macro won't tell you how many times 'World Wide Web' appears in the document, though. After all, given your criteria, it's impossible to know what terms should have been reduced to an acronym but weren't.

Sub AcronymLister()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim StrTmp As String, StrAcronyms As String, i As Long, j As Long, k As Long, Rng As Range, Tbl As Table
StrAcronyms = "Acronym" & vbTab & "Term" & vbTab & "Page" & vbTab & "Cross-Reference Count" & vbTab & "Cross-Reference Pages" & vbCr
With ActiveDocument
  With .Range
    With .Find
      .ClearFormatting
      .Replacement.ClearFormatting
      .MatchWildcards = True
      .Wrap = wdFindStop
      .Text = "\([A-Z0-9]{2,}\)"
      .Replacement.Text = ""
      .Execute
    End With
    Do While .Find.Found = True
      StrTmp = Replace(Replace(.Text, "(", ""), ")", "")
      If (InStr(1, StrAcronyms, .Text, vbBinaryCompare) = 0) And (Not IsNumeric(StrTmp)) Then
        If .Words.First.Previous.Previous.Words(1).Characters.First = Right(StrTmp, 1) Then
          For i = Len(StrTmp) To 1 Step -1
            .MoveStartUntil Mid(StrTmp, i, 1), wdBackward
            .Start = .Start - 1
            If InStr(.Text, vbCr) > 0 Then
              .MoveStartUntil vbCr, wdForward
              .Start = .Start + 1
            End If
            If .Sentences.Count > 1 Then .Start = .Sentences.Last.Start
            If .Characters.Last.Information(wdWithInTable) = False Then
              If .Characters.First.Information(wdWithInTable) = True Then
                .Start = .Cells(.Cells.Count).Range.End + 1
              End If
            ElseIf .Cells.Count > 1 Then
              .Start = .Cells(.Cells.Count).Range.Start
            End If
          Next
        End If
        StrTmp = Replace(Replace(Replace(.Text, " (", "("), "(", "|"), ")", "")
        StrAcronyms = StrAcronyms & Split(StrTmp, "|")(1) & vbTab & Split(StrTmp, "|")(0) & vbTab & .Information(wdActiveEndAdjustedPageNumber) & vbTab & vbTab & vbCr
      End If
      .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
      .Find.Execute
    Loop
    StrAcronyms = Replace(Replace(Replace(StrAcronyms, " (", "("), "(", vbTab), ")", "")
    Set Rng = .Characters.Last
    With Rng
      If .Characters.First.Previous <> vbCr Then .InsertAfter vbCr
      .InsertAfter Chr(12)
      .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
      .Style = "Normal"
      .Text = StrAcronyms
      Set Tbl = .ConvertToTable(Separator:=vbTab, NumRows:=.Paragraphs.Count, NumColumns:=5)
      With Tbl
        .Columns.AutoFit
        .Rows(1).HeadingFormat = True
        .Rows(1).Range.Style = "Strong"
        .Rows.Alignment = wdAlignRowCenter
      End With
      .Collapse wdCollapseStart
    End With
  End With
  Rng.Start = ActiveDocument.Range.Start
  For i = 2 To Tbl.Rows.Count
    StrTmp = "": j = 0: k = 0
    With .Range
      With .Find
        .ClearFormatting
        .Replacement.ClearFormatting
        .Format = False
        .Forward = True
        .Text = "[!\(]" & Split(Tbl.Cell(i, 1).Range.Text, vbCr)(0) & "[!\)]"
        .MatchWildcards = True 
        .Execute
      End With
      Do While .Find.Found
        If Not .InRange(Rng) Then Exit Do
        j = j + 1
        If k <> .Duplicate.Information(wdActiveEndAdjustedPageNumber) Then
          k = .Duplicate.Information(wdActiveEndAdjustedPageNumber)
          StrTmp = StrTmp & k & " "
        End If
        .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
        .Find.Execute
      Loop
    End With
    Tbl.Cell(i, 4).Range.Text = j
    StrTmp = Replace(Trim(StrTmp), " ", ",")
    If StrTmp <> "" Then
      'Add the current record to the output list (StrOut)
      StrTmp = Replace(Replace(ParseNumSeq(StrTmp, "&"), ",", ", "), "  ", " ")
    End If
    Tbl.Cell(i, 5).Range.Text = StrTmp
  Next
End With
Set Rng = Nothing: Set Tbl = Nothing
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Function ParseNumSeq(StrNums As String, Optional StrEnd As String)
'This function converts multiple sequences of 3 or more consecutive numbers in a
' list to a string consisting of the first & last numbers separated by a hyphen.
' The separator for the last sequence can be set via the StrEnd variable.
Dim ArrTmp(), i As Long, j As Long, k As Long
ReDim ArrTmp(UBound(Split(StrNums, ",")))
For i = 0 To UBound(Split(StrNums, ","))
  ArrTmp(i) = Split(StrNums, ",")(i)
Next
For i = 0 To UBound(ArrTmp) - 1
  If IsNumeric(ArrTmp(i)) Then
    k = 2
    For j = i + 2 To UBound(ArrTmp)
      If CInt(ArrTmp(i) + k) <> CInt(ArrTmp(j)) Then Exit For
      ArrTmp(j - 1) = ""
      k = k + 1
    Next
    i = j - 2
  End If
Next
StrNums = Join(ArrTmp, ",")
StrNums = Replace(Replace(Replace(StrNums, ",,", " "), ", ", " "), " ,", " ")
While InStr(StrNums, "  ")
  StrNums = Replace(StrNums, "  ", " ")
Wend
StrNums = Replace(Replace(StrNums, " ", "-"), ",", ", ")
If StrEnd <> "" Then
  i = InStrRev(StrNums, ",")
  If i > 0 Then
    StrNums = Left(StrNums, i - 1) & Replace(StrNums, ",", " " & Trim(StrEnd), i)
  End If
End If
ParseNumSeq = StrNums
End Function