VBA to Insert Enter After Every 5th Word, Unless Comma Precedes

**mlexcelhelpforum** · 07-03-2013, 05:23 PM

Hello anyone!

I have a paragraph of text in Microsoft word. I want to break the paragraph into lines either after every 5th word in the string, or after commas/periods, whichever comes first.

For example:

The dog is sitting on the floor. It is thirsty, and it pants for water. The dog's owner pours the dog a fresh bowl of water. etc.

turns into ->

The dog is sitting on (note: 5 words)
the floor. (note: period comes first)
It is thirsty, (note: comma comes first)
and it pants for water. (note: 5 words)
The dog's owner pours the (note: 5 words)
dog a fresh bowl of (note: 5 words)
water. (note: period comes first)

Thank you!!!
P.S. The notes in parentheses are just notes, not what should be output by the VBA code.

**hamjam** · 07-11-2013, 01:11 PM

Hello
As I post for Excel, I have done the code suitable for Excel. It may be suitable for Word, but I have not tried it as such

Sub test()
    Dim maxwords As Integer
    Dim sentence As Variant
    Dim phrase As Variant
    Dim nextpiece As Variant
    Dim wordcount As Integer
    
    stop1 = "."
    stop2 = ","
    
    sentence = ActiveCell.Value
    For n = 1 To Len(sentence)
        nextpiece = Mid(sentence, n, 1)
        phrase = phrase & nextpiece
        
        If nextpiece = " " Then
            If Len(phrase) > 1 Then wordcount = wordcount + 1  'check needed to catch space after stops
        Else
            'do nothing
        End If
        
        If (nextpiece = stop1 Or nextpiece = stop2 Or wordcount = 5) Then
            ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Value = phrase
            ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Activate
            phrase = ""
            wordcount = 0
        End If
    Next n
End Sub

Regards