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Ryan McCormick

Search Text With Regular Expressions in VBA | RegEx VBA

April 30, 2015 by Ryan 2 Comments

For text items that are difficult to parse, regular expressions can come in handy. For this example, I put together a function that parses email addresses from string text. For simplicity and reference-sake, I adopted an email regex search pattern from: https://www.regular-expressions.info/email.html.

Not all use cases are created equally, re-purpose my example as needed. Also, please comment with questions/comments/improvements.

Regular expression search for email address in VBA

Public Sub filterByRegex()
    ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
    'BEFORE USE, ADD REFERENCE TO:
    'Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5
    ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
    Dim RegEx As New RegExp
    Dim mCol As MatchCollection
    Dim mItem As Variant
    Dim iInput As String
    
    iInput = "This is a test sampleemail@example.com to " _
    & "see if the email test@example.com addresses can be found"
    
    With RegEx
        'pattern adopted from practical implementation of RFC 5322:
        'https://www.regular-expressions.info/email.html
        .Pattern = "[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@" _
        & "(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?"
        
        ''''''''''''''
        ' Global:
        ' True = Match All occurrences in search string
        ' False = Match only the first occurrence in search string
        ''''''''''''''
        .Global = True
    End With

    Set mCol = RegEx.Execute(iInput)
    
    For Each mItem In mCol
        'Item output here, debug.print for demo purposes
        Debug.Print mItem
    Next mItem
    
    Set RegEx = Nothing
    Set mCol = Nothing

End Sub

Filed Under: Microsoft Access, VBA Tagged With: email address regex, regex, regular expressions, vba

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Comments

  1. Jim says

    October 13, 2017 at 3:44 pm

    absolutely brilliant! This solved my problem and made my day!

    Reply
  2. AzDayton says

    May 22, 2018 at 12:51 pm

    Succinct. Just the way I like my code examples! 🙂
    Took me almost no time at all to adapt to my own needs.
    Thank you!

    Reply

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