Find Replace Multiple Macro in Word - vba

Question

I want a quick way to deidentify documents by removing employees' signatures in comments (yes, I already have one that removes identifying info, just not the text itself). A macro that could search all employee names and replace with "" would be great. I'm sure there is a simple way to do this.
Everything I've tried has failed, either not finding text in comments or not working after I copy/paste the recorded code for Find/Replace one name and adjust for the other 20-30 names. I've tried probably 4 different find/replace codes that work for the main text, but none have worked for the comments.
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "Employee Name 1"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchByte = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "Employee Name 2"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchByte = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Copying/pasting this through all 20-30 employees fails (no error, just doesn't replace). I'm sure there's a more elegant way to do it anyway, but I'm definitely not familiar enough with code.

Answer 1

It's not 100% clear from the phrasing in the question whether code for removing the comments' author and initials is also required, or just text in the comments that refers to employees' names. So the code below does both.
First, an array is declared and populated with the employees' names that should be removed. This will make it easier to manage the list and shorten the amount of code (doesn't need to be copy/pasted for each employee).
Then, the collection of comments is looped and two tests are perfomed.
Does the comment text contain any employee's name. To determine this, the array of employee names is looped and the presence of the name checked using Instr. If a name is present, Find/Replace is run on the Comment.Range. (Note: this code contains only the barebones Find properties, you may need to add some things if more is needed.)
Remove Authorand Initial information. Here, the list of author names is part of the Case test. If a comment contains one of them, the Author and Initial information is set to an empty string.
Note that it comment's Range does not include the comment's author or initials information, only the content of the comment (which you may know, but others reading this may not).
Sub RemoveAuthorFromAllComments() ' TestLoopCommentWords()
Dim C As Word.Comment, rng As Word.Range
Dim employees() As Variant, e As Variant
employees = Array("Cindy Meister", "John Doe", "Mary Jane")
For Each C In ActiveDocument.Comments
Set rng = C.Range
For Each e In employees
If InStr(rng, e) <> 0 Then
With rng.Find
.Text = e
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End If
Next
Select Case C.Author
Case "Cindy Meister", "John Doe", "Mary Jane"
C.Author = ""
C.Initial = ""
Case Else
Debug.Print C.Author
End Select
Next
End Sub