[BBDavid1]

I have a file that is written with some tabs that should have been made into
an excel file in the first place, but whoever made it wasn't bright enough to
do that. Therefore, the file is mostly in paragraph format; there are no
tables. I need to extract all the serial numbers of equipment found at the
end of each paragraph. Luckily, the person highlighted all the serial numbers
in blue. The other common identifier is he consistently put: "(Serial No.
AB########)" for all the entries. I tried a couple of different methods to
try to extract the data to an Excel file or to convert it to a table within
word, but nothing would consistently work. Now I'm asking for help just to
get the serial numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. Here's an example:

Unit A Circuit 1000
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AB#######)
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AB#######)
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AB#######)

Unit B Circuit
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AC#######)
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AC#######)

Of course it's not as perfect as above, but any ideas would be very much
appreciated.

Thanks
David

[CyberTaz]

One option if you want to retain the parens:

Forget about the highlighting:-)

Do a Find: ( Replace With:[(

Then select the entire doc, TableConvert Text to Table, specify 2 columns &
set the Separate Text At to Other: [ , then click OK. Select the resulting
column containing the extracted serial numbers, copy & paste to wherever you
want - maybe in an Excel sheet.

If you don't want the parens you could:

Find: ). Replace With: [leave blank] in order to remove the ")." after
each SN.

Then select & do as above but use the ( as the Separate Text At marker.

--
HTH |:)
Bob Jones
Office:Mac MVP


"BBDavid1" wrote in message
...
I have a file that is written with some tabs that should have been made
into
an excel file in the first place, but whoever made it wasn't bright enough
to
do that. Therefore, the file is mostly in paragraph format; there are no
tables. I need to extract all the serial numbers of equipment found at the
end of each paragraph. Luckily, the person highlighted all the serial
numbers
in blue. The other common identifier is he consistently put: "(Serial No.
AB########)" for all the entries. I tried a couple of different methods to
try to extract the data to an Excel file or to convert it to a table
within
word, but nothing would consistently work. Now I'm asking for help just to
get the serial numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. Here's an example:

Unit A Circuit 1000
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AB#######)
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AB#######)
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AB#######)

Unit B Circuit
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AC#######)
tabJIM'S Relay good working order (Serial No. AC#######)

Of course it's not as perfect as above, but any ideas would be very much
appreciated.

Thanks
David