Difference between revisions of "Documentation/OOo3 User Guides/Writer Guide/Finding and replacing"

Latest revision as of 21:25, 14 July 2018

Writer has a Find and Replace feature that automates the process of searching for text inside a document. In addition to finding and replacing words and phrases, you can:

• Use wildcards and regular expressions to fine-tune a search.
• Find and replace specific formatting.
• Find and replace paragraph styles.

To display the Find & Replace dialog box, use the keyboard shortcut Control+F or select Edit > Find & Replace.

1. Type the text you want to find in the Search for box.
2. To replace the text with different text, type the new text in the Replace with box.
3. You can select various options such as matching the case, matching whole words only, or doing a search for similar words. (See below for some other choices.)
4. When you have set up your search, click Find. To replace text, click Replace instead.

The Find & Replace dialog box

If you click Find All, Writer selects all instances of the search text in the document. Similarly, if you click Replace All, Writer replaces all matches.

Use Replace All with caution; otherwise, you may end up with some hilarious (and highly embarrassing) mistakes. A mistake with Replace All might require a manual, word-by-word, search to fix, if mistakes are not discovered in time to undo.

Find and replace specific formatting

A very powerful use of Find & Replace takes advantage of the format option. For example, you might want to replace underlined words with italics.

On the Find & Replace dialog box with More Options displayed, follow the instructions below:

To search for text with specific formatting, enter the text in the Search for box. To search for specific formatting only, delete any text in the Search for box. Click Format to display the Text Format (Search) dialog box. The tabs on this dialog box are similar to those on the Paragraph format and Paragraph Style dialog boxes. Choose the formats you want to search for and then click OK. The names of selected formats appear under the Search for box. For example, you might search for all text in 14-point bold Helvetica. To replace text as well as formatting, type the replacement text in the Replace with box. Click Find, Find All, Replace, or Replace All.

Find & Replace Specific Text & Formatting

• To search for specific text with specific formatting (for example, the word hello in bold), specify the formatting, type the text in the Search for box and leave the Replace with box blank.

• To remove specific character formatting, click Format, select the Font tab, then select the opposite format (for example, No Bold).

• The No Format button on the Find & Replace dialog box clears all previously selected formats.

• Click Find, Find All, Replace, or Replace All.

Unless you plan to search for other text using those same attributes, click No Format to remove the attributes after completing your search. If you forget to do this, you may wonder why your next search fails to find words you know are in the document.

Find and replace paragraph styles

If you combine material from several sources, you may discover that lots of unwanted paragraph styles have suddenly shown up in your document. To quickly change all the paragraphs of one (unwanted) style to another (preferred) style:

1. On the expanded Find & Replace dialog box, select Search for Styles. (If you have attributes specified, this option is labeled Including Styles.) The Search for and Replace with boxes now contain a list of styles.
2. Select the styles you want to search for and replace.
3. Click Find, Find All, Replace, or Replace All.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each style that you want to replace.

Use wildcards (regular expressions)

Wildcards (also known as regular expressions) are combinations of characters that instruct OOo how to search for something. Regular expressions are very powerful but not very intuitive. They can save time and effort by combining multiple finds into one.

Table 1 shows a few of the regular expressions used by OOo.

The online help describes many more regular expressions and their uses.

One of the most common mistakes when using regular expressions is to try to search for a character that is defined as a wildcard, such as brackets or dots. If you need to search for such a character, type a backslash (\) before it. This instructs OOo to treat the character following the backslash as a normal character. For example, to find the text $5.00 ($ and . are wildcard characters), you would conduct a search using \$5\.00.

To use wildcards and regular expressions when searching and replacing:

1. On the Find & Replace dialog box, click More Options to see more choices. On this expanded dialog box, select the Regular expressions option.
2. Type the search text, including the wildcards, in the Search for box and the replacement text (if any) in the Replace with box. Not all regular expressions work as replacement characters; the line break (\n) is one that does work.
3. Click Find, Find All, Replace, or Replace All (not recommended).

Expanded Find & Replace dialog box.

Table 1. Examples of search wildcards (regular expressions)