Find all instances of “{ XE text text }” with RegEx

Question

I'm working on a macro that will loop through my Word document, and select all of the XE codes, to parse through.

I'm trying to use Find to get all such texts, but my regex searches aren't working at all.

I've tried: </{ XE*/}> , <{*XE*}> to no avail.

To remind, the text will look like this:

{ XE "Superhero - means a person with some powers" }
{ XE "Mountain is a tall hill, not always climbable." }
{ XE "Hill is a smaller mountain; not always large." }

I want to loop through each of these, and add two characters after each ; found. How can I find these using RegEx?

Edit: For some reason, the .Find never executes, even with the below code:

Sub escape_Special_Characters_in_XE_Text()
Dim regExSearch$
Dim doc     As Word.Document
Dim rngDoc As Word.Range, rngXE As Word.Range, rng As Word.Range
Dim bFound  As Boolean
Dim iFieldCodeBegin&

Set doc = ActiveDocument
Set rngDoc = doc.Content
Set rngXE = rngDoc.Duplicate
bFound = True
iFieldCodeBegin = 6          '?
rngDoc.Find.ClearFormatting
With rngDoc.Find
        .Text = "^d XE"
        '.Replacement.Text = ""
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
End With

rngDoc.Find.Execute
rngDoc.Select ' This selects the whole document for some reason?

End Sub

Is there something I'm overlooking with regard to my Document? Why can't it find anything. If I record a macro, it uses Selection instead of a variable, but I can run that over and over. When I try to use variables is when it seems to disagree with me.

Answer 1

Actually, you can find the starting braces of a field code using Word's Find by specifying the ESC combination: ^d

And when Find picks up the starting point of a field, the entire field is included in the Selection/Range. So you can loop all the XE fields in a document along the following lines:

Sub LoopAllXE()
    Dim doc As word.Document
    Dim rngDoc As word.Range
    Dim rngXE As word.Range
    Dim bFound As Boolean
    Dim iFieldCodeBegin As Long

    'Initialization
    Set doc = ActiveDocument
    Set rngDoc = doc.content
    Set rngXE = rngDoc.Duplicate
    bFound = True
    iFieldCodeBegin = 6
    With rngDoc.Find
        .ClearFormatting
        .ClearAllFuzzyOptions
        .Text = "^d XE"
        .Format = False
        .wrap = wdFindStop
    End With

    'Get the XE fields' content
    Do While bFound
        bFound = rngDoc.Find.Execute
        If bFound Then
            Set rngXE = rngDoc.Duplicate
            'Do something with the XE field content
            'Below, the content is being trimmed of field code info
            Debug.Print Mid(rngXE.Text, iFieldCodeBegin, _
                            Len(rngXE) - iFieldCodeBegin - 1)
            'Content in table cells needs to be processed differently
            'in order to avoid looping endlessly on the first "found"
            Do While rngDoc.Information(wdWithInTable) And bFound
                rngDoc.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
                'Remainder of cell content after XE-field
                rngDoc.End = rngDoc.Cells(1).Range.End - 1
                bFound = rngDoc.Find.Execute
                Set rngXE = rngDoc.Duplicate
                'Do something with the XE field content
                'May make sense to put this in a separate procedure
                Debug.Print Mid(rngXE.Text, iFieldCodeBegin, _
                            Len(rngXE) - iFieldCodeBegin - 1)
                If Not bFound Then
                    rngDoc.MoveStart wdCell, 1
                End If
            Loop
            rngDoc.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
            rngDoc.End = doc.content.End
        End If
    Loop
End Sub