Deleting Unused Bookmarks

Eric has a document that has many bookmarks that were either created by Word itself or are remnants of previous bookmarks no longer needed. He wonders if there is a quick way to delete all the unused bookmarks in the document.

The answer depends on what is meant by "unused." In general, there are two ways you could possibly determine if a bookmark is unused or not. If the bookmark is not the target of a cross-reference, then you might consider it unused. If the bookmark is "empty," meaning it doesn't contain text, you might also consider it unused.

Notice that in these two measures, I used the term "might." That was deliberate, because you could have empty bookmarks that have a use—you might use them to jump to locations within your document, for instance. In that case, calling an empty bookmark "unused" would be a misnomer.

The same could be said about bookmarks that aren't targets of cross-references. You might, again, have them defined to mark places to which you want to jump or text that you might way to reference in a macro or text that will be referenced by some other type of field.

When it comes to bookmarks created by Word—generally referred to as "system bookmarks"—things get even murkier. Word routinely creates bookmarks for use by many fields. The names of these system bookmarks begin with an underscore, and bookmarks whose names begin with underscores are considered "hidden" by Word. So, these system bookmarks are normally maintained in the background, out of sight. But, they are there, and they may serve a purpose, even a purpose that may be hard to discern.

Let's say, though, that you decide you do want to delete all the empty bookmarks and all the system bookmarks defined in your document. The easiest way to do this is to use a macro, such as the following:

Sub DeleteUnusedBookmarks1()
    Dim bm As Bookmark
    Dim J As Integer
    Dim C1 As Integer
    Dim C2 As Integer
    Dim sMsg As String

    C1 = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count

    For J = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count To 1 Step -1
        Set bm = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(J)

        ' Delete if bookmark is empty or system-generated
        If bm.Range.Start = bm.Range.End Or Left(bm.Name, 1) = "_" Then bm.Delete
    Next J

    C2 = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count

    sMsg = "There were originally " & C1 & " bookmarks, "
    sMsg = sMsg & "and " & C1-C2 & " unreferenced bookmarks "
    sMsg = sMsg & "have been deleted. "
    sMsg = sMsg & "There are " C2 & " bookmarks remaining."
    MsgBox sMsg, vbInformation
End Sub

The macro steps through all bookmarks and, if the bookmark is empty (it doesn't refer to a range of text) or its name begins with an underscore, it is deleted. When done, you'll see a message about how many bookmarks were deleted.

If you want to get just a bit more selective and delete only system bookmarks and those that are not referenced anywhere in your document, then the macro needs to be a bit longer:

Sub DeleteUnusedBookmarks2()
    Dim bm As Bookmark
    Dim C1 As Integer
    Dim C2 As Integer
    Dim bname As String
    Dim found_it As Boolean
    Dim sMsg As String
    Dim sfc As Boolean

    ' Remember whether field codes are shown or not
    sfc = ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes

    ' Show field codes, so that their code string
    ' is available to Find
    ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = True

    C1 = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count

    For Each bm In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
        bname = bm.Name
        If Left(bname, 1) = "_" Then
            ' System-generated bookmark
            bm.Delete
        Else
            ' Start search at beginning of document
            ActiveDocument.Range(0, 0).Select

            With Selection.Find
                .Text = bname
                .Execute
                found_it = .Found
            End With
            If found_it = False Then bm.Delete
        End If
    Next bm

    C2 = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count
    ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = sfc

    sMsg = "There were originally " & C1 & " bookmarks, "
    sMsg = sMsg & "and " & C1-C2 & " unreferenced bookmarks "
    sMsg = sMsg & "have been deleted. "
    sMsg = sMsg & "There are " & C2 & " bookmarks remaining."
    MsgBox sMsg, vbInformation
End Sub

In this case the macro turns on the display of field codes so that Find and Replace can be used to locate text within the codes. This allows the macro to find whether a bookmark name is used in any of the field codes. If it is not used in any field codes, then the bookmark is deleted. The bookmark is also deleted if its name begins with an underscore. Upon completion, a recap of what was deleted is also presented.

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