Use search options in your Word add-in to find text

Add-ins frequently need to act based on the text of a document. A search method is exposed by every content control (this includes Body, Paragraph, Range, Table, TableRow, and the base ContentControl object). This method takes in a string (or wildcard expression) representing the text you are searching for and a SearchOptions object. It returns a collection of ranges which match the search text.

Search options

The search options are a collection of boolean values defining how the search parameter should be treated.

Search for special characters

The following table lists the search notation for certain special characters.

Wildcard guidance

The following table provides guidance around the Word JavaScript API's search wildcards.

Escape special characters

Wildcard search is essentially the same as searching on a regular expression. There are special characters in regular expressions, including '[', ']', '(', ')', '{', '}', '*', '?', '<', '>', '!', and '@'. If one of these characters is part of the literal string the code is searching for, then it needs to be escaped, so that Word knows it should be treated literally and not as part of the logic of the regular expression. To escape a character in the Word UI search, you would precede it with a backslash character ('\'), but to escape it programmatically, put it between '[]' characters. For example, '[*]*' searches for any string that begins with a '*' followed by any number of other characters.

Examples

The following examples demonstrate common scenarios.

Ignore punctuation search

// Run a batch operation against the Word object model.
await Word.run(async (context) => {

    // Queue a command to search the document and ignore punctuation.
    const searchResults = context.document.body.search('video you', {ignorePunct: true});

    // Queue a command to load the font property values.
    searchResults.load('font');

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
    console.log('Found count: ' + searchResults.items.length);

    // Queue a set of commands to change the font for each found item.
    for (let i = 0; i < searchResults.items.length; i++) {
        searchResults.items[i].font.color = 'purple';
        searchResults.items[i].font.highlightColor = '#FFFF00'; //Yellow
        searchResults.items[i].font.bold = true;
    }

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
});

Search based on a prefix

// Run a batch operation against the Word object model.
await Word.run(async (context) => {

    // Queue a command to search the document based on a prefix.
    const searchResults = context.document.body.search('vid', {matchPrefix: true});

    // Queue a command to load the font property values.
    searchResults.load('font');

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
    console.log('Found count: ' + searchResults.items.length);

    // Queue a set of commands to change the font for each found item.
    for (let i = 0; i < searchResults.items.length; i++) {
        searchResults.items[i].font.color = 'purple';
        searchResults.items[i].font.highlightColor = '#FFFF00'; //Yellow
        searchResults.items[i].font.bold = true;
    }

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
});

Search based on a suffix

// Run a batch operation against the Word object model.
await Word.run(async (context) => {

    // Queue a command to search the document for any string of characters after 'ly'.
    const searchResults = context.document.body.search('ly', {matchSuffix: true});

    // Queue a command to load the font property values.
    searchResults.load('font');

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
    console.log('Found count: ' + searchResults.items.length);

    // Queue a set of commands to change the font for each found item.
    for (let i = 0; i < searchResults.items.length; i++) {
        searchResults.items[i].font.color = 'orange';
        searchResults.items[i].font.highlightColor = 'black';
        searchResults.items[i].font.bold = true;
    }

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
});

Search using a wildcard

// Run a batch operation against the Word object model.
await Word.run(async (context) => {

    // Queue a command to search the document with a wildcard
    // for any string of characters that starts with 'to' and ends with 'n'.
    const searchResults = context.document.body.search('to*n', {matchWildcards: true});

    // Queue a command to load the font property values.
    searchResults.load('font');

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
    console.log('Found count: ' + searchResults.items.length);

    // Queue a set of commands to change the font for each found item.
    for (let i = 0; i < searchResults.items.length; i++) {
        searchResults.items[i].font.color = 'purple';
        searchResults.items[i].font.highlightColor = 'pink';
        searchResults.items[i].font.bold = true;
    }

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
});

Search for a special character

// Run a batch operation against the Word object model.
await Word.run(async (context) => {

    // Queue a command to search the document for tabs.
    const searchResults = context.document.body.search('^t');

    // Queue a command to load the font property values.
    searchResults.load('font');

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
    console.log('Found count: ' + searchResults.items.length);

    // Queue a set of commands to change the font for each found item.
    for (let i = 0; i < searchResults.items.length; i++) {
        searchResults.items[i].font.color = 'purple';
        searchResults.items[i].font.highlightColor = 'pink';
        searchResults.items[i].font.bold = true;
    }

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
});

Search using a wildcard for an escaped special character

As noted earlier in Escape special characters, there are special characters used by regular expressions. In order for a wildcard search to find one of those special characters programmatically, it'll need to be escaped using '[' and ']'. This example shows how to find the '{' special character using a wildcard search.

// Run a batch operation against the Word object model.
await Word.run(async (context) => {

    // Queue a command to search the document with a wildcard for an escaped opening curly brace.
    const searchResults = context.document.body.search('[{]', { matchWildcards: true });

    // Queue a command to load the font property values.
    searchResults.load('font');

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
    console.log('Found count: ' + searchResults.items.length);

    // Queue a set of commands to change the font for each found item.
    for (let i = 0; i < searchResults.items.length; i++) {
        searchResults.items[i].font.color = 'purple';
        searchResults.items[i].font.highlightColor = 'pink';
        searchResults.items[i].font.bold = true;
    }

    // Synchronize the document state.
    await context.sync();
});

Try code examples in Script Lab

Get the Script Lab add-in and try out the code examples provided in this article. To learn more about Script Lab, see Explore Office JavaScript API using Script Lab.

See also

More information can be found in the following:

• Word JavaScript Reference API
• Related Word code samples available in Script Lab:
  • Search
  • Get word count
• Find and replace text in Word