Programmatically loop through found items in documents

  • Article

The Find class has a Found property, which returns true whenever a searched-for item is found. You can loop through all instances found in a Range using the Execute method.

Applies to: The information in this topic applies to document-level projects and VSTO Add-in projects for Word. For more information, see Features available by Office application and project type.

To loop through found items

  1. Declare a Range object.

    The following code example can be used in a document-level customization.

    Word.Range rng = this.Content;

    The following code example can be used in a VSTO Add-in. This example uses the active document.

    Word.Document document = this.Application.ActiveDocument;
Word.Range rng = document.Content;

  2. Use the Found property in a loop to search for all occurrences of the string in the document, and increment an integer variable by 1 each time the string is found.

    rng.Find.ClearFormatting(); 
rng.Find.Forward = true; 
rng.Find.Text = "find me"; 

rng.Find.Execute(
    ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, 
    ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
    ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing);

while (rng.Find.Found) 
{ 
    intFound++;
    rng.Find.Execute(
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, 
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing);
}

  3. Display the number of times the string was found in a message box.

    MessageBox.Show("Strings found: " + intFound.ToString());

    The following examples show the complete method.

Document-level customization example

To loop through items in a document-level customization

  1. The following example shows the complete code for a document-level customization. To use this code, run it from the ThisDocument class in your project.

    private void FindLoop() 
{ 
    int intFound = 0; 
    Word.Range rng = this.Content; 

    rng.Find.ClearFormatting(); 
    rng.Find.Forward = true; 
    rng.Find.Text = "find me"; 

    rng.Find.Execute(
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, 
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing);

    while (rng.Find.Found) 
    { 
        intFound++;
        rng.Find.Execute(
            ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, 
            ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
            ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing);
    } 

    MessageBox.Show("Strings found: " + intFound.ToString()); 
}

VSTO Add-in example

To loop through items in a VSTO Add-in

  1. The following example shows the complete code for a VSTO Add-in. To use this code, run it from the ThisAddIn class in your project.

    private void FindLoop()
{
    int intFound = 0;
    Word.Document document = this.Application.ActiveDocument;
    Word.Range rng = document.Content;

    rng.Find.ClearFormatting();
    rng.Find.Forward = true;
    rng.Find.Text = "find me";

    rng.Find.Execute(
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
        ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing);

    while (rng.Find.Found)
    {
        intFound++;
        rng.Find.Execute(
            ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
            ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing,
            ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing, ref missing);
    }

    MessageBox.Show("Strings found: " + intFound.ToString());
}

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