If you are working with a large formatted document, you may want to use Find and Replace to search for different document elements. At some point you may wonder if there is a way to search for bulleted paragraphs. (You know—the ones you use the Bullets tool on the Home tab of the ribbon to create.) Unfortunately, there is no built-in way to do this. Word doesn't allow you to search for a "bulleted" attribute, nor does it allow you to search for the actual bullet or the tab character following the bullet.
One solution is to simply search for the paragraph indenting applied by the bullet format you want to find. Thus, if the format applies a half-inch indent, then you could search for that. Of course, that leaves the potential problem of finding other non-bulleted paragraphs with a similar indent.
Another solution is to create a macro that will search for bulleted paragraphs. The following VBA macro will do the trick:
Sub FindBullet() Dim rngTarget As Word.Range Dim oPara As Word.Paragraph Set rngTarget = Selection.Range With rngTarget Call .Collapse(wdCollapseEnd) .End = ActiveDocument.Range.End For Each oPara In .Paragraphs If oPara.Range.ListFormat.ListType = _ WdListType.wdListBullet Then oPara.Range.Select Exit For End If Next End With End Sub
The best way to use the macro is to assign it to a shortcut key. Each time you invoke the macro, the next bulleted paragraph within the document is selected. When the end of the document is reached, the selection remains set to the last bulleted paragraph.
If you think that you may need to search for bulleted paragraphs quite a bit, one solution for future documents is to not use the Bullets tool to create these formats. Instead, define a style for your bulleted paragraphs, and use the style to do your formatting. Then you'll be able to search for the style—which is quite easy in Find and Replace—and find your bulleted paragraphs every time.
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8259) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Finding Formatted Bulleted Paragraphs.
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2021-11-25 06:26:12
Ken Endacott
There may be more than one bulleted and/or numbered list and it is useful to select paragraphs in one list at a time. The following macro summarises lists and highlights the paragraphs belonging to a selected list.
Sub HighlightLists()
Dim k As Long
Dim j As Long
Dim s As String
Dim aList As List
Dim aRange As Range
Dim aPara As Paragraph
Dim NumType()
NumType = Array("None", "in Paragraph", "Bullet", _
"Simple", "Outline", "Mixed", "Picture Bullet")
k = ActiveDocument.Lists.Count
s = ""
For j = 1 To k
Set aList = ActiveDocument.Lists(j)
s = s & Str(j) & " " & NumType(aList.ListParagraphs(1) _
.Range.ListFormat.ListType) & vbCrLf
Next j
k = Val(InputBox(s, "Enter list number to highlight paragraphs"))
If k < 1 Or k > 6 Then Exit Sub
For Each aPara In ActiveDocument.Lists(k).ListParagraphs
aPara.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
Next aPara
End Sub
2021-11-24 11:18:34
Joy Freeman
This did not work for me, perhaps because I'm using Word for Mac? It only selected the first bulleted paragraph, though I could see there was a Next statement, which suggested it was supposed to loop and continue. At first I thought it was because the End If and Exit For statements were out of order, but switching these gave me an error.
After way too long playing with it, trial and error, I finally removed the "Exit For" statement completely and ran it again and this time only the last bulleted paragraph remained selected, suggesting it had performed all the loops. So I inserted "Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdBrightGreen" before the "End If" and now it finds and highlights all bulleted paragraphs so I can review them by searching for highlighted text.
I also made a copy of that macro and edited it into a version to highlight numbered lists. I simply replaced "wdListBullet" with "wdListSimpleNumbering" (I also changed the highlight color, though that isn't necessary).
I thought this might help someone else.
2016-09-12 01:43:44
Cody
Can this be modified to work for numbered lists?
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