Bill Coan, the brains behind one of our favorite utilities (DataPrompter), wrote with this enhancement to a previous reader tip about deleting duplicate entries in a Word list:

Claudio Faria offered a great tip on removing duplicates in Word. As you'll recall, she suggested using Word's Edit>Replace command and then placing a checkmark next to Use Wildcards. With wildcards enabled, Claudio recommended entering the following values into the Replace dialog box:

Find What: ([!^13]@)^13\1^13 Replace With: \1^p

The only drawback to this approach is that you have to click Replace repeatedly until Word has found and deleted all duplicate paragraphs.

I'd like to offer a small refinement to Claudio's technique, which makes it possible to find and delete all duplicate paragraphs with a single click. As with Claudio's technique, you start by sorting your document so that identical paragraphs are situated contiguously. Then you choose Edit>Replace and place a checkmark next to Use Wildcards. Then you enter the following values into the Replace dialog box:

Find What: ([!^13]@)^13(\1^13)@ Replace With: \2 When you click Replace, Word finds and deletes all duplicate paragraphs. For a full explanation of the wildcard search terms, please review Claudio's excellent summary in the last issue. What follows is a condensed explanation of why this works:

Find What: ([!^13]@)^13

The above expression means: "Find one or more non-paragraph-marks followed by a paragraph mark" (i.e., find a complete paragraph).

Find What: ([!^13]@)^13(\1^13)

The above expression means: "Find one or more non-paragraph-marks followed by a paragraph mark followed by an identical series of non-paragraph-marks followed by a paragraph mark" (i.e., find a complete paragraph followed by an identical complete paragraph).

Find What: ([!^13]@)^13(\1^13)@

The above expression means: "Find one or more non-paragraph-marks followed by a paragraph mark followed by one or more identical series of non-paragraph-marks followed by a paragraph mark" (i.e., find a complete paragraph followed by one or more identical complete paragraphs).

Replace With: \2

The above expression means: "Replace the found text with the second parenthetical expression in the Find What text" (i.e., Replace the found text with a single copy of the complete paragraph).

-- Bill Coan, www.wordsite.com

Editor's note: Don't miss our review of DataPrompter. Thanks for your insight, Bill. If you have a tip to share with Office Letter readers, please send it to tips@officeletter.com.

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