VBA Word: Regex replace capture group does not highlight - regex

Question

I cannot figure out why the code is not working. I want to find within a cell (XXX) regex match and highlight each occurrence. Tried a lot of things.
rangeFinding.SetRange Start:=rngStart.Start, End:=rngEnd.End
rangeFinding.Select
With Selection
.Tables(1).cell(2, 2).Range.Text = y
End With
Dim qq As Range
Set qq = GetCellTextRange(Selection.Tables(1).cell(2, 2))
Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
With qq.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = "(\(*\))"
.MatchWildcards = True
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.Text = "\1"
.Replacement.Highlight = True
.Replacement.Font.Color = vbRed
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
qq.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
End If
Procedure that is called:
Function GetCellTextRange(cl As cell) As Range ' ' GetCellTextRange
returns the content range of a table cell '
Dim rng As Range
Set rng = cl.Range
rng.MoveEnd wdCharacter, -1
Set GetCellTextRange = rng
End Function
Changing font color and/or bold does work, however highlighting not. Even when I replace \1 with YYY it works. But highlighting does not get applied, either when I use .Replacement.Highlight or alternative qq.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow.
BTW: does the Find (and its Execute) function adapt qq range? That is what I noticed, but the docs do not tell it clearly.

Answer 1

I ran into the same problem with wildcard search/replace in VBA code not highlighting text. I was able to work around it by explicitly setting the default highlight colour before running the wildcard search/replace, and then setting it back to whatever it was afterward, e.g.:
currentHighlightColour = Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex
Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
With ActiveDocument.Range.Find
.ClearFormatting
.replacement.ClearFormatting
.Text = "(\{\{placeholder: *\}\})"
.Format = True
.replacement.Text = "\1"
.Forward = True
.matchWildcards = True
.matchCase = False
.replacement.Highlight = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = currentHighlightColour
Seems like a bug in Word, but at least there's a workaround.