Extract acronyms, bookmarks, tracked changes and comments from Word

The story behind DocTools ExtractData

On my website thedoctools.com I have provided free macros for exporting / extracting acronyms, tracked changes  and comments for years. The macros have been downloaded by thousands of Word users over the years. DocTools ExtractData combines improved versions of those macros in an add-in. In addition, the add-in lets you export / extract bookmarks and related data from any Word document – this is new functionality I have developed for the DocTools ExtractData add-in. As opposed to the free macros, the add-in includes a user interface in the Ribbon for easy access.

As illustrated in the Introduction section, a menu named Extract Data will be found on the DocTools tab when you have installed the DocTools ExtractData add-in. Below you will find details about the individual commands in the Extract Data menu.

About header and footer info in extract documents

Each of the commands in the Extract Data menu creates a new document with the following data in the header:

• Full name of the source document from which the data was extracted
• Name of the document creator
• Creation date of the extract document

Extract Acronyms – about the extracted data

Some documents may contain many acronyms (i.e. words formed from the initial letters of multi-word names, e.g. VBA for "Visual Basic for Applications"). It is helpful to include the definition/full name the first time you mention an acronym. Alternatively, you may want to create a list of all the acronyms and include the definitions in the list.

The Extract Acronyms lets you create such list, ready for adding the definitions. Any word consisting of 3 or more uppercase letters will be interpreted as an acronym. The acronyms will be filled into a 3-column table. For each acronym, the table will show:

1. The acronym
2. An empty cell to be used for definition of the acronym
3. Page number of first occurrence of the acronym

The bookmarks and metadata will be filled into a 5-column table. For each bookmark, the table will show:

1. An index number
2. Page number where the bookmark starts
3. The name of the bookmark
4. The part of the document in which the bookmark is found, e.g. "Main text", "First page footer", or "Primary header"
5. The bookmarked text – if the bookmarks marks a position only, the text "(Empty bookmark)" will be shown

When you select the Extract Bookmarks command, a dialog box lets you select whether you want to include hidden bookmarks in the extract. The names of hidden bookmarks start with an underscore. Hidden bookmarks are added by Word e.g. in relation to tables of contents and cross-references. More details about this will be shown in the dialog box. See the illustrations below for examples of extracts excl. and incl. hidden bookmarks.

The tracked changes and metadata will be filled into a 6-column table. Only insertions and deletions will be extracted. Any other type of change will be ignored. Also note that the macro will only include insertions and deletions in the main body of the document (i.e. changes in headers, footers, footnotes and endnotes will not be included). For each insertion or deletion, the table will show:

1. Page number
2. Line number
3. The type of change
4. The text that was inserted or deleted
5. Name of the author who made the change
6. The date the change was made

The comments and metadata will be filled into a 6-column table. The command will extract comments that have been inserted via Review tab > New Comment. For each comment the table will show:

1. Page number
2. Line number– NEW in version 1.4
3. The text that was commented (i.e. the scope)
4. The comment itself
5. Name of the author who inserted the comment
6. Date when the comment was added, date format dd-MMM-yyyy