Graham Mayor

... helping to ease the lives of Microsoft Word users.
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Create a fraction

Using Word's autocorrect function, certain fonts allow fractions entered in text in the format 1/2 to be corrected to use the matching font character ½. This is all very well if the font has the required characters, but you will be struggling when you get around to 35/278 for example.

The Word MVP web site offers a useful approach to creating formatted fractions involving Word's EQ field, but here I suggest an alternative approach using a macro to format any selected fraction in the format number/number. Thus the suggested 35/278 becomes 35⁄278.

This actually looks better when used in Word than it does in the browser e.g.

The Macro Code

Sub FmtFraction()
Dim sFraction() As String
Dim sChar As String
'Check if a fraction is selected
'and if not show a warning and exit
If InStr(Selection, "/") = False Then
 MsgBox "No fraction selected!", vbCritical, "Format Fraction"
 Exit Sub
End If
'Define a new slash character
sChar = ChrW(&H2044)
'Split the original fraction at the slash character
sFraction = Split(Selection, "/")
'Reformat the fraction using super and subscript
With Selection
 .Font.Superscript = True
 .TypeText Text:=sFraction(0)
 .Font.Superscript = False
 .TypeText Text:=sChar
 .Font.Subscript = True
  TypeText Text:=sFraction(1)
 .Font.Subscript = False
End With
End Sub

 

If you do not know how to employ this code, see the tutorial elsewhere on this site.

 

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Fractions

Using Word's autocorrect function, certain fonts allow fractions entered in text in the format 1/2 to be corrected to use the matching font character ½.

This is all very well if the font has the required characters, but you will be struggling when you get around to 35/278 for example.