Create the empty macro

A previous post covers creating an empty macro like the one shown below. When you’re done, you’ll have something like:

The single quote tells VBA the rest of the text on that line is a comment meant for human readers. We start our macro steps on the empty line.

We will also create a second macro to search for parentheses forward in the document.

This version again uses the Selection object, but see the member version where we write it more robustly using Ranges with some additional checks to prevent any spurious selections when parentheses do not exist in the document.

Assumptions, assumptions

Before we create the macro, we need to understand exactly what we are looking for in the document.

Sounds obvious, but do we assume the user runs the macro when the insertion point (i.e., the blinking I-bar waiting for new text to be typed) is already between the parentheses? Or do we want our macro to find any nearby parentheses?

The differences are slight, but the specific steps matter.

If we assume the former, it simplifies the macro steps since you don’t have to worry about which direction to move the insertion point in the document at the start of the macro.

Personally, I like the latter approach since it can find the parentheses anywhere in the document. Also a macro is more practical when the user doesn’t have to remember specifics about how it works to use it.

With that goal in mind, I created one version to search backward and another to search forward in the document. Both versions work the same if the insertion point happens to already be between the open and close parentheses.

As we develop the macro below, we’ll work on the search left version and tweak it to search right when we’re done by changing the order of the search and move commands.

Find open parenthesis

We previously covered a macro allowing us to quickly navigate to various punctuation marks in a document. This macro leans on some of the commands covered in that article but achieves a different effect.

Specifically, we first want to find a set of parentheses before the current insertion point, so we start by searching backward in the document for a left parenthesis “(”.

This step is quite general since the insertion point doesn’t need to be between open and close parentheses to do the search.

Move to open parenthesis

The basic command to move the Selection’s position to a specific character uses the MoveUntil command

The command does just as the name implies. It moves the insertion point until it finds any one of the characters given in the Cset option. Here we are only looking for a left parenthesis.

Most regular Cset characters are specified inside double quotes as shown, but some special characters have to be added separately using a few standard Word character constants or a character function for many other special characters.

The Count:=wdBackward option instructs the command to move backward in the document just as the name of the constant implies.

Some details

It’s useful to understand some details about the Selection and the document before moving forward.

This will also give us some practice understanding macros and how we can bridge the gap between specific macro steps and achieving the overall effect we wish in our document.

At an open parenthesis

When the macro is run, we have assumed the open parenthesis exists somewhere before the starting position in the document.

Once the open parenthesis is located, the insertion point is moved just to the right of the newly located open parenthesis. Specifically, the Start and End positions of the Selection are both set to that same position in the document.

No selection yet

Since the Start and End positions are the same, there is no selection in the document yet.

Assume a close parenthesis to the right

We will also assume a close parenthesis exists to the right of our current position in the document.

Ignore potential problems

We’re not going to worry about problems with whether or not the open or close parentheses actually exist in the proper order in this version of the macro.

Any gotchas in this macro are minor since nothing changes in the document except what text is selected. A spurious selection might be made, but presumably, the user would then just ignore the strange selection.

See member version

If you’re like me, you insist the gotchas are handled well in a macro, so see the member version to handle them more robustly based on the document conditions or lack thereof.

In that version, nothing happens if there are no parentheses to find or one of the parentheses is missing.

Include the open parenthesis

Now we start creating the desired selection of the parenthetical text.

At this point in the macro, the Start position of the Selection is just after the open parenthesis.

Most of the time, we’ll probably want to include the open parenthesis as part of the selection.

MoveStart tells Word to move the Start position of the Selection by the given Unit type. We omit the Unit here since the default is to move by character (i.e., the command assumes a Unit:=wdCharacter option if it isn’t given).

The Count:=-1 option tells VBA to move backward (the negative) by 1 Unit to include the open parenthesis in the selection.

The End position of the selection is not changed with this command.

Since Start and End now have different positions in the document, we now have a real, albeit incomplete, selection. Yay!

Include any spaces

If you prefer to include any spaces on the left side of the selection (not my preference), you could also add

This command acts similar to MoveStart except it keeps moving the Start position while it keeps finding any characters given in the Cset option which is just a space here.

Find close parenthesis

Now that we are somewhat confident our incomplete selection is currently in between a pair of the open and close parentheses, we can proceed by moving the End position of the Selection to the close parenthesis.

Since we have already found and included the open parenthesis, we don’t want to disturb the Start of the Selection for the rest of the macro.

Move the End position of the selection

The MoveEndUntil command moves the Selection’s End position to a specific character or any of a set of characters given by a Cset option

The Start position is unchanged by this command, so we are extending the End of the Selection forward in the document.

Include the close parenthesis

At this point in the macro, the End position of the Selection is just before the close parenthesis.

Most of the time, we’ll want to include the close parenthesis as part of the selection

We don’t need any options here because the default Unit is to move by characters in the document, and the default Count option is to move by one Unit forward.

Include any spaces

Including any spaces on the right side of the selection mimics how Word usually works, so we add

MoveEndWhile keeps adding characters to the Selection as long as it keeps finding any given in the Cset option. We’re just adding spaces.

The default is to extend the End of the selection forward in the document which is what we need here.

The Start position of the selection is unchanged by this command.

Final macros

Putting all of this together, the final versions of the macros are a little longer than some we have done, and there is one for each direction.

Neither of these macros require the user to run the macro with the insertion point between the parentheses which is a little bonus.

Select parentheses backward macro

To select all text between the previous set of parentheses backward in the document, use

If you want to include spaces on the left side of the Selection, then remove the single quote in your version of the macro on the line

Then delete or comment out the other line you no longer need.

In general, this is a nice way to remove a line from your macro without getting rid of it since VBA will see it as just a comment line.

I assigned my version to the keyboard shortcut Command+Shift+9 in Word for Mac and Control+Shift+9 in Windows.

Select parentheses forward macro

To select all text between the next set of parentheses forward in the document, we have to switch the directions of the searches and for which parentheses we are searching.

After making these changes (not on screen), the result is

I assigned my version to keyboard shortcuts Command+Shift+0 in Word for Mac and Control+Shift+0 in Windows.

If you’re interested in a more robust version that checks for whether the parentheses exist before committing to any changes, look at the member version.