Generating a List of Unique Words

Isao wonders if there is a way to easily construct a list of all the unique words in a document. He doesn't need to know how many times each word appears; he just needs the list of unique words. In addition, uppercase and lowercase variations on the same word should count as the same word.

There is no built-in Word function or tool to do this. However, in VBA you can access the Words collection, which includes all the words in the document. With this in mind, you can create a macro that builds a sorted list of unique words in the document and then adds those words to the end of the document.

Sub UniqueWordList()
    Dim wList As New Collection
    Dim wrd
    Dim chkwrd
    Dim sTemp As String
    Dim k As Long

    For Each wrd In ActiveDocument.Range.Words
        sTemp = Trim(LCase(wrd))
        If sTemp >= "a" And sTemp <= "z" Then
            k = 0
            For Each chkwrd In wList
                k = k + 1
                If chkwrd = sTemp Then GoTo nw
                If chkwrd > sTemp Then
                    wList.Add Item:=sTemp, Before:=k
                    GoTo nw
                End If
            Next chkwrd
            wList.Add Item:=sTemp
        End If
nw:
    Next wrd

    sTemp = "There are " & ActiveDocument.Range.Words.Count & " words "
    sTemp = sTemp & "in the document, before this summary, but there "
    sTemp = sTemp & "are only " & wList.Count & " unique words."

    ActiveDocument.Range.Select
    Selection.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
    Selection.TypeText vbCrLf & sTemp & vbCrLf
    For Each chkwrd In wList
        Selection.TypeText chkwrd & vbCrLf
    Next chkwrd
End Sub

Note that each word in the document is extracted, converted to lowercase, and then added to the wList collection, in sorted order. Words are only added if they are alphabetic (thus, numbers are excluded, as is punctuation), and the macro pays no attention to the case of the words. You should also be aware that the macro only looks at words in the main body of the document. It does not include any words in places such as headers, footers, text boxes, or shapes.

The macro could easily be changed to allow for varying needs. For instance, you could have the macro stick the wordlist into a separate document instead of at the end of the current document. All you would need to do is to insert this line before the exiting line shown second here:

    sTemp = "There are " & ActiveDocument.Range.Words.Count & " words "
    sTemp = sTemp & "in " & ActiveDocument.Name & ", but there "
    sTemp = sTemp & "are only " & wList.Count & " unique words."

    Documents.Add
    ActiveDocument.Range.Select
    Selection.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
    Selection.TypeText vbCrLf & sTemp & vbCrLf
    For Each chkwrd In wList
        Selection.TypeText chkwrd & vbCrLf
    Next chkwrd
End Sub

Note that there was only one substantive change in the macro: The addition of the "Documents.Add" method to create the new document for the summary.

For some other ideas on getting words out of a document—including macros that tally word frequency—you may want to refer to this tip: Generating a Count of Word Occurrences.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7697) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.