Regular Expression for Find and Replace in Microsoft Word

Question

I want to remove leading and trailing tags from country names.
In my example those tags are <li> and <a>.

<li><a href="http://afghanistan.makaan.com/">Afghanistan</a></li>
<li><a href="http://albanie.makaan.com/">Albanie</a></li>
<li><a href="http://algérie.makaan.com/">Algérie</a></li>

Result should be:

Afghanistan
Albanie
Algérie

In Microsoft Word, I want to use the Find and Replace feature to accomplish it with regular expression.

How can I use regular expressions in MS Word?

your question is really not very clear. Are you saying you are starting with a word document and you want to use REG's to manipulate the text? — phatmanace, Nov 30 '13 at 09:20
I want to create a database of Country names. So i copied(view source code) country names with leading and trailing
Define "database" - is your final output in word, or a 'real' database like postgres or mysql? — phatmanace, Nov 30 '13 at 09:36
phatmanace, Thanks for your response. I want to use these country names in SQL Database and to create javaScript's country database(Afghanistan|Albanie|Algérie). — user2791156, Nov 30 '13 at 09:53
added another bit of my answer, given the latest information. — phatmanace, Nov 30 '13 at 12:03
@user2791156 I did a major edit on your question. I hope I haven't misinterpreted anything. Also, is VBA a valid solution? — nixda, Dec 02 '13 at 20:51
possible duplicate of [Is there a way to search for a pattern in a MS Word document?](http://superuser.com/questions/846646/is-there-a-way-to-search-for-a-pattern-in-a-ms-word-document) — nixda, Dec 03 '14 at 19:02
This question could be a lot better if it came up with something that actually requires regex. Removing tags `

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 02 '13 at 22:04

Instead of copying your input text to Word, copy it to Notepad++ or any other editor with full RegEx support.

A RegEx string to select everything outside of tags or everything between > and < signs would be.

(?<=>).*?(?=<)

enter image description here

(?<=>) is a look behind. It looks for > signs and acts as an anchor. This way you can exclude the search string, which is important since you don't want <Afghanistan
.*? is a lazy quantifier and selects everything until the very next expression
(?=<) is a look ahead and looks for a < sign but excludes the searched sign itself. Just like the look behind

But you don't want to select the country names. You want to remove every tag. You need the opposite of the first regular expression. Somthing like

<.*?>

enter image description here

Open Notepad++ search & replace dialog
Select Use regular expressions
Find what: <.*?>
Replace with: nothing

nixda, You are brilliant. Solution worked for me. Thanks. :-) — user2791156, Dec 04 '13 at 03:35

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 09 '17 at 17:43

2

This is easy to do in MS Word's Find and Replace, without Regex, without JavaScript, etc.

If you escape a bracket it finds the actual bracket character. So, with wildcards toggled on, the expression \<*\\> will find everything between angle brackets. Just replace that with nothing.

edited Jun 09 '17 at 17:43

Greenonline

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answered Jun 09 '17 at 16:58

Eliot Gelwan

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phatmanace · Answer 3 · 2013-11-30T12:03:13.387

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This looks like it's what you need.

Given latest comment (that you just want it in javsacript) - I'd look somewhere like here

if you want that in a SQL database, then I'd probably just write a couple of lines of perl to give you the list from the raw javascript. As far as I can tell; MS word doesn't come into it.

edited Nov 30 '13 at 12:03

answered Nov 30 '13 at 09:21

phatmanace

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phatmanace, Thanks for your efforts made for me. – user2791156 Dec 04 '13 at 03:38

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 02 '13 at 18:46

I wouldn't use find/replace for that. It would be simplest to use "Text to Columns" in Excel for that task. To do it, select the column that contains the text, go to the "Data" ribbon and select "Text to Columns". You will need to do it twice, once to remove all the text prior to the country name (delimited symbol would be ">" - make sure you delete the extraneous columns to avoid confusion) and once to remove the text after the name (delimited symbol would be "<").

Regular Expression for Find and Replace in Microsoft Word

4 Answers4

Linked