macro to remove profanity and swear words in word files

Question

Hi there, I edit books with on aspect being removing swear words. I have never used a macro but there probably is a way to remove a set of words with **** or simply blanks. How can this be accomplished? Many thank, L.

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Mod moved from : Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Answer 1

To create a macro in Microsoft Word that removes profanity or swear words, you can use VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). Below is a simple example of how you might set up such a macro. This macro will replace specified swear words with asterisks (****) or simply remove them.

1. Open Microsoft Word.
2. Press ALT + F11 to open the VBA editor.
3. In the editor, click Insert > Module to create a new module.
4. Copy and paste the following code into the module:

Sub RemoveProfanity()
    Dim swearWords As Variant
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim rng As Range

    ' List of swear words to remove
    swearWords = Array("swearword1", "swearword2", "swearword3")

    ' Loop through each word in the list
    For i = LBound(swearWords) To UBound(swearWords)
        ' Set the range to the entire document
        Set rng = ActiveDocument.Content
        ' Replace the swear word with asterisks
        rng.Find.Execute FindText:=swearWords(i), ReplaceWith:="****", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    Next i
End Sub

5. Replace "swearword1", "swearword2", "swearword3" with the actual words you want to filter out.
6. Close the VBA editor and return to Word.
7. To run the macro, press ALT + F8, select RemoveProfanity, and click Run.

This macro will replace any instance of the specified swear words in the document with asterisks. If you want to remove the words entirely instead of replacing them with asterisks, change ReplaceWith:="****" to ReplaceWith:="".

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References:

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