Expanding on our toolbox of macros that handle menial editing tasks in Word, we create a macro to delete the first word of the current sentence without having to move the insertion point.
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Delete the first word of a sentence
Sometimes we find a tool we didn't know we wanted. It sounds so simple or even unnecessary at first—delete the first word of the current sentence without moving the insertion point (or changing the selection). Even if you're in doubt, give it a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
This version works as if the task were performed manually, just in VBA, but the member version uses a better more VBA-like approach. It also allows some punctuation marks at the beginning of a sentence since Word treats each one as an individual "word." It further removes a neighboring comma when appropriate saving us that extra bit of time and effort.
Why the first word?
Yeah, we have a keyboard and mouse to make small edits like this, but … this macro was a “productive procrastination” moment for me. I didn’t feel like writing at the time, so I tricked myself into creating another macro to take care of a menial task that was annoying me. At least I wasn’t “researching” writing videos, but this one has surprised me perhaps more than many others. It’s not my most productive macro, but I use it often.
Create the empty macro
A previous post covers creating an empty macro like the one shown below.
The single quote tells VBA the rest of the text on that line is a comment meant for human readers, and we start our macro steps on the empty line.
What are the manual steps?
What steps would we use to delete the first word of a sentence manually? We could start with the mouse.
- Double click the first word of the sentence to select it (slower than it feels)
- Press the Delete key
- Delete and then replace the first character of the new first word of the sentence
- Move back to the original editing location
The steps are slightly different if we use the keyboard or otherwise navigate to the beginning of the sentence.
- Move to the beginning of the sentence with the keyboard or mouse (slower than it feels)
- Press Function+Command+Delete on a Mac or Control+Delete in Windows to delete the word.
- Delete and replace the first character of the new first word of the sentence
- Move back to the original editing location
No standard keyboard shortcut exists to navigate between sentences in Word, but a previous article covers how to assign shortcuts to a pair of Word commands to do that.
Following either set of steps in a macro is a little naive since VBA offers better techniques, but it's a good starting point while learning VBA. If you've ever recorded a macro and opened it in the VBA editor, this is basically what the record feature does.
What are object thingies in VBA?
Who ever thought of such things?
Well … they've been around for a while actually well before VBA was released for Word. In that mode, VBA generalizes document element concepts we use daily as virtual "objects." Most of them are obvious like a Paragraph or Document, but some are more utilitarian like a document Range (see below). In computer world, such objects include various actions (called "methods") and data (called "properties") that allow us to change them or the related document content. Most VBA objects are named as expected except the first letter is capitalized.
What is the Selection?
The Selection is how VBA allows us to control the selection we see on the screen. Moreover, since an insertion point is just an empty selection, it's also represented by the same object. Since it represents the author's current edit location, only one exists per document. At a root level, it's like a document Range, but the Selection contains extra methods and properties tailored to it's specialized purpose in a document plus some extra just for convenience. A separate article goes into more detail if you're interested.
What is a Range?
A Range is a span of document content that acts like an invisible Selection. We can store a document range in a VBA variable, so we can access the necessary methods or properties to carry out the macro task. We can move it around, extend or contract it in the document, insert or delete text, etc. Other properties allow us to modify the spanned content such as the formatting or case. For more information, see our brief introduction to Ranges.
What's with all the Range stuff?
If we use the Selection to do the macro steps, the edits will show on screen as we work (but super fast). More importantly for this macro, the insertion point would finish at the beginning of the sentence. This is okay if it's what we want, but we can do better. If we instead use a Range variable to make the edits, the insertion point won't move from its starting location, and we can just keep working after the macro finishes.
Manual approach to delete the word
In many cases, particularly for simple macros, it's often easy to simply follow along with the manual steps in VBA.
Store the current document position or selection
We need to identify the initial sentence. The Selection represents this information in the document, so we use it to store the initial insertion point position (or the selection) in the document.
We need to refer to the Range of the Selection since it is more than just a Range. This is a common early step in editing macros since we're often working with the text at or near the starting position in the document.
We must Set the Range assignment since it is not just a regular value like a number, but afterward, we use an equals "=" sign just like we do for any other variable assignment. The MyRange variable name just keeps the macro sounding English-like. I usually use something shorter or more descriptive.
Move to the start of the sentence
We’ve used StartOf method before when working with the Selection, and the command works basically the same for a Range variable.
StartOf doesn’t move the insertion point if the range is already positioned at the start of the given Unit which works perfectly for this macro. The Unit constants include the common ones in a document (e.g., words, sentences, paragraphs, etc.). This command uses Word’s standard sentence constant wdSentence which we assign to the Unit option using a colon equals := symbol.
Selection has not moved
Since we're moving the MyRange variable, the Selection remains unchanged in the document. This is an important trick for this macro since the intention is to allow the author to just keep working without any other interruption after the macro finishes.
Delete the first word
The range is positioned at the first word of the sentence, so now we can remove that word from the document using the Delete method.
This method acts like the keyboard’s (forward) Delete key [or Function (Globe)+Delete on a Mac], so the default is to delete forward in the document by one character. We need to delete the whole word, so we further assign the wdWord unit constant to the Unit option.
Capitalize the new first word
Our working range MyRange spans no document text, so we can only capitalize the word at the range position. We change the case of text using the Case property.
Word includes a standard list of Case constants, but wdTitleWord does exactly what we want without any potential issues since the range is positioned at just one word. The sentence constant wdTitleSentence would also work here since the macro does not account for a double quote or parenthesis at the beginning of the sentence.
Any gotchas?
Authors probably don't need this admonition, but anytime we’re deleting content with a macro, we should think harder about potential problems. Fortunately, the gotchas are nominal in this macro. At worst, we lose an unintended word, but even that’s unlikely to happen given the simplicity of the steps.
Does a starting selection exist?
A typical gotcha consideration for most text-oriented macros is whether a starting selection exists when the macro runs, but does it matter here?
Would don’t really care if there is a starting selection. While we assign our working range based on the Selection, we move it to the beginning of the sentence as the first step. The StartOf method automatically collapses the range by default (we did not specify the Extend option), so Start and End are at the same position in the document regardless of whether an initial selection existed at the beginning of the macro.
What happens with an empty paragraph?
A less-than-obvious case occurs if the Selection starts in an empty paragraph. Granted, one could argue an author wouldn't run the macro on an empty paragraph, but accidents happen. We might tap the wrong shortcut key, for example.
In this macro, Word treats an empty paragraph as being part of the last sentence of previous paragraph. It's not a natural definition in my opinion, but for this macro, it means no logical error occurs. The first word of the last sentence of the previous paragraph will be deleted. The action may seem a little unintuitive at first glance, but it is not incorrect. In my own macro, I might add a check to just exit the macro if we start in an empty paragraph, but I do not want to clutter this macro presentation.
Finish the macro
Put the commands together to finish the macro.
Using MyRange to make the changes leaves the insertion point in place, so we can just keep working where we were. I assigned my version of this macro to Command+Option+W in Word for Mac or Control+Alt+W on Windows.
Try it. I expect you'll see why I've grown accustomed to this little macro.
Improvements
This version acted more like a VBA monkey tapping out the same steps only using a range variable, but the member version takes a more VBA-like approach using document element ranges. It also ignores any beginning of sentence double quotes or parentheses, so it works naturally within dialog or other work-related documents. It further accounts for a neighboring comma when appropriate.
Since the macro makes two changes, we might encapsulate them into one action via an undo record, so they are reversed as one step not two. I will occasionally include undo records in small macros, but use caution since they can cause significant problems (not exaggerating) with the undo action chain.
