Change pronouns for specific people, not the whole document?

Hello, Rag

Thank you for reaching out Microsoft Community. I am an advisor that can provide help regarding Microsoft Office Word concerns. I totally understand your concern regarding changing of pronouns for specific person or people in your Word document. Apparently, Microsoft Word doesn't have a built-in feature that automatically changes pronouns for specific individuals throughout a document. Adjusting pronouns from female to male or vice versa, especially in a way that distinguishes between individuals such as changing pronouns for "Joe" but not for "Sarah," requires a more nuanced approach than a simple find-and-replace can offer, due to the complexity of natural language and the context-specific nature of pronouns.

However, you can use a combination of careful find-and-replace operations and manual editing to achieve this goal. Here’s how you might approach it:

First, Backup Your Document.

Instead of replacing "she" with "he," look for phrases that are unique to the context of the individual. For example, "Joe said she" can be replaced with "Joe said he."

Manually search for the individual's name and then review the surrounding text for pronoun usage. This method is more time-consuming but ensures accuracy, especially in documents where multiple individuals’ pronouns might be changed.

After replacing subject pronouns (he, she), repeat the process for possessive pronouns (his, her) and object pronouns (him, her).

Please consider that there's no substitute for a manual review, especially in complex documents or narratives. Context matters greatly in pronoun usage, and automatic tools can't always understand nuances.

Please let me know if these information answered the concern and helped us to resolve the issue. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below.

Kind regards, Kevin

I know of no simple way to do this after-the-fact. That is, none easier than manually going through the document and making the change.

I know of two Add-Ins to assist with it when creating a document or a document template.

• Interactive Content Control Pronoun Set Add-In (free) by Greg Maxey
• Gender Toolbar Add-In

Both are designed to allow you to specify certain individuals in a template and change all pronouns at once. This is done using either Fields or Mapped Content Controls for those pronouns.

Since the use of pronouns is based on our understanding of text content, this is likely one of those situations in which you need an individual to make the changes manually.

There is nothing in yuor code that will cause the change only to be made for pronouns associated with Joe.

That said, I doubt that the requirement can be automated

Hi, thank you for reaching out. My name is Deeksha and I'm a Microsoft user like yourself and I will try to help you as best as I can today.

If you need to do this frequently or for a large document, you might find it easier to use a VBA macro:

Open your Word document.

Press Alt + F11 to open the VBA editor.

Insert a new module by right-clicking on any existing module or the document name on the left pane > Insert > Module.

Copy and paste the following VBA code into the module window:

Sub ReplacePronouns()

Dim rng As Range Dim findList As Variant, replaceList As Variant Dim i As Long

findList = Array("(she|her|her|herself)", "(he|him|his|himself)") replaceList = Array("\1he\2im\3is\4elf", "\1she\2her\3her\4self")

Set rng = ActiveDocument.Content

For i = LBound(findList) To UBound(findList) With rng. Find . ClearFormatting . Replacement.ClearFormatting . Text = findList(i) . Replacement.Text = replaceList(i) . Forward = True . Wrap = wdFindContinue . Format = False . MatchCase = False . MatchWholeWord = False . MatchWildcards = True . Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll End With Next i

End Sub

Close the VBA editor.

Press Alt + F8, select ReplacePronouns, and click Run to run the macro.

This VBA macro will automatically replace the pronouns based on the names you specified (Joe and Sarah) throughout the entire document.

Note: Make sure to save a backup of your document before running any macros or making bulk changes to ensure you don’t accidentally lose any important data. The VBA macro is more efficient for large documents or for repeated use.

Try these steps and hopefully, it resolves your issue. In case you need further help or assistance, please let us know. You can also contact Microsoft Support if the problem persists.

Best regards Deeksha