I often need to do stuff to URLs in text, and matching them with wildcards can be tricky. A major obstacle was that I needed to format the URL, but not the boundary characters I used to find it (spaces, parens, etc.). So I ended up having to do a bit of range gymnastics.
The following macro does a fair job of getting most standard URL formats. Feel free to offer suggestions or to adapt for your own purposes.
Sub MatchURLs()
'
' Matches most www, ftp, and http(s) variations.
' Known issues: doesn't currently seem to match
' if URL is at end of table cell
'
Dim rngToSearch As Range
Dim rngURL As Range
Set rngToSearch = ActiveDocument.Range
Set rngURL = rngToSearch.Duplicate
Do
With rngURL.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = " [htps:/wf.]{3,5}[! ,)(^013^019]@[ ,)(^013^019]"
.Forward = True
.MatchWildcards = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Execute
End With
If rngURL.Find.Found = False Then
Exit Do
End If
rngURL.MoveEnd unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=-1
rngURL.MoveStart unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
'
' ######################
' Do stuff to rngURL Here
'
' ######################
'
rngURL.MoveStart wdWord
rngURL.End = rngToSearch.End
Loop Until rngURL.Find.Found = False
End Sub
Cheers!
