Macro of the Month – April 2023 – ThatWhich

Replaces "that" with "which" and vice versa

This month’s macro makes quick work of a common edit: replacing “that” with “which” or vice versa. Also, if last month’s macro wasn’t efficient enough, Paul has made a useful update to HyphenSpaceWordCount worth knowing about. And for those who want to make macros even more seamless to use, a technology tip.

ThatWhich

While changing “that” to “which,” and the other way around, is a common edit, it isn’t one we can speed up by doing a global find and replace or by using FRedit (a global find-and-replace macro). We have to assess the surrounding text for each instance to determine if a change is warranted. We can, however, use the ThatWhich macro to condense the selecting, deleting, and typing into one step.

How it works: When you run across a “that” or a “which” that needs changing, simply put the cursor inside the word—anywhere will do—and run ThatWhich. It takes care of the rest. Bonus: It even inserts a comma with the “which” and deletes a comma, if present, when deleting “which.”

When you need to make a that-which edit, place the cursor inside the word and press the shortcut to run the ThatWhich macro. That's it! It's programmed to edit different variations of the terms.

Download the code: www.wordmacrotools.com/macros/T/ThatWhich  

Update to HyphenSpaceWordCount

Paul made some improvements to last month’s featured macro that I thought you’d want to know about. If you remember, you run HyphenSpaceWordCount to determine if an author has consistently hyphenated a word pair; it gives you a list of the variants and their frequency. In last month’s newsletter, I suggested that when you find inconsistent hyphenation, you can use Word’s find and replace to find and edit the inconsistencies. 

Paul’s recent update to the macro makes the finding and replacing more efficient. When you run HyphenSpaceWordCount, the macro automatically sets up a find for you in Word, letting you jump directly into editing mode. Use Ctrl+Page Down (PC) / Fn+Cmd+down arrow (Mac) to scroll through the instances of the word. Each press of this shortcut will take you to the next instance, which you can edit, if needed; then press the shortcut again to jump to the next instance. If you change your mind about an edit, you can use Ctrl+Page Up (PC) / Fn+Cmd+up arrow (Mac) to go in the other direction.

Check out Paul’s video on super searching for a demonstration of this and other tips for searching in Word, including how to use wildcards for those who don’t know (or don’t want to learn) how to use wildcards.

Get the updated HyphenSpaceWordCount code here: www.wordmacrotools.com/macros/H/HyphenSpaceWordCount

Tip – Using the Elgato Stream Deck to launch macros

Do you ever feel like you’ve run out of keyboard shortcuts for your macros—at least ones that are convenient for your fingers? Some editors use a programmable keypad (sometimes called a macro keyboard) to give themselves more options. A programmable keypad is essentially a blank auxiliary keyboard; you assign functions and macros to the keys. Once you map a macro to one of the keys, all you have to do is tap that key to launch the macro.

The Elgato Stream Deck is an electronic programmable keyboard with additional functions. To learn how to set up and use the Elgato Stream Deck, check out this video by William Fouquet of William Fouquet Candlelight Editing. You may want to subscribe to his channel as he has other technology videos about macros in the works.
 
What is the one macro you wish you had? Reply to this email and let me know.

Regards,
Jennifer