How to programmatically to go to a paragraph in Word 2016

Question

I have a large document that I created, and some of the paragraphs are quite large. Now I want to programmatically loop through each paragraph, and if a paragraph has too many words, then I want to go to that paragraph so that I can manually break it up or simplify it.

Looping through the paragraphs is not a problem; getting the number of words for each paragraph is not a problem.

But going to that paragraph is insanely difficult.

Much of the examples around the internet suggest this code:

Sub GotoParagraph10()
     Dim paragraphNumber as Integer

     paragraphNumber = 10

     Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToParagraph, Which:=wdGoToAbsolute, Count:=paragraphNumber

End Sub

This code tries to go to paragraph 10. The problem is that wdGoToParagraph is not defined in the WdGotoItem list - despite wide reference to this item. This does show up in Intellisense, and when used at runtime, the constant resolves to -1 and the code thinks I'm trying to go to a bookmark, not a paragraph number.

Ok, so I got it - I can't use this constant. How, then, do I programmatically go to a specific paragraph?

Answer 1

Try this out

Public Sub SelectParagraphByIndex(Index As Long)
    Dim Paragraph As Word.Paragraph
    Dim i         As Long
    
    For Each Paragraph In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs
        i = i + 1
        If i = Index Then
            Paragraph.Range.Select
            Exit For
        End If
    Next
    
End Sub

'Call from here
Public Sub SelectTester()
    SelectParagraphByIndex 10
End Sub