AppleScripting an MSWord find operation - ms-word

Question

I'm trying to convert a Word VBA procedure to an AppleScript and only having partial luck.
Here's the first version of the VBA procedure:
Public Sub postprocessMerges1()
Dim rng As Range
Selection.HomeKey unit:=wdStory
With Selection.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = False
Do
.Text = "..."
.Execute
If .Found Then
.Parent.Select
Set rng = Selection.Range
rng.MoveStart unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=-1
rng.MoveEndUntil cset:=Chr(13)
rng.Text = formatAmounts(rng.Text)
End If
Loop While .Found
End With
End Sub
And here's my corresponding AppleScript:
on postprocessMerges()
tell application "Microsoft Word"
home key selection move unit a story extend by moving
set selFind to find object of selection
clear formatting selFind
set foundIt to true
repeat while foundIt
set foundIt to execute find selFind find text "..." wrap find stop with match forward without find format
if foundIt then
set foundRng to text object of selection
set foundRng to move start of range foundRng by a paragraph item count -1
set foundRng to move range end until foundRng characters {return}
set tt to (content of foundRng)
set (content of foundRng) to my formatAmounts(tt)
end if
end repeat
end tell
end postprocessMerges
Okay, so that works just fine. However, I'd like it to be better. The way the script is currently written, it actually jumps from hit to hit, highlighting the found text and performing the replacement generated by the formatAmounts subroutine. Not bad, but when you're working with a 200+ page document, it gets a little tedious to see that happening onscreen.
So in VBA, I can do this:
Public Sub postprocessMerges2()
With ActiveDocument.Content.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = False
Do
.Text = "..."
.Execute
If .Found Then
With .Parent
.MoveStart unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=-1
.MoveEndUntil cset:=Chr(13)
.Text = formatAmounts(.Text)
.Collapse direction:=wdCollapseEnd
End With
End If
Loop While .Found
End With
End Sub
This will perform the exact same action as the first procedure, but it does so on the document's content range rather than the selection range and so I don't have to watch Word jump around from page to page to page. Much more preferable, but not something I've been able to emulate in AS.
Specifically, I can't seem to get the hit range each time through the loop without selecting it first. The find object in Word's AS dictionary doesn't have a Parent property I can access like I do in VBA.
Is there anything I'm missing? Is what I do in the second VBA proc actually replicable in AS?
This is using Word 2011 and AppleScript 2.3 on OS X 10.9.3.

Answer 1

This should probably be a comment, but...
Is what I do in the second VBA proc actually replicable in AS?
Let me put it this way. I think you will probably end up using the Selection object a lot more in AS than you are probably used to doing in VBA. In this case, in VBA, the Find.Execute should return a new Range, but in AS it just returns true/false. If you look it up in the AS dictionary, it looks as if the execute find should return a "text range/insertion point" but what it actually returns is what is stated in the description at the top of the entry for "execute find", i.e. a boolean. The find object does not have a range. So it is difficult to see how to get the range of the thing you just found. As far as I can tell, using execute find in AS with a find object derived from a range object is only useful in the situation where you can specify the replacment object and do the entire replace in the execute.
It might also be useful to read Matt Neuberg's comments in this conversation