MS Word X tricks: grep-like search and replace
Category: Mac, Category: MS Word
Originally posted on my iBlog 14 April 2003 (for interest only; I've since moved to TeXShop with NeoOffice to open Word files).
Summary: I typically use BBEdit for complicated text search-and-replace requests, using grep. But when I am stuck in MS Word, there are some options (which I took a while to find out about).
You can find general text-number combinations (e.g., any letter followed immediately by any two numbers) and replace them all with the same text and other things around that text, using "find what text" (^&).
Example: to add a tab before all strings of letter-number-number (e.g., A23), find ^$^#^# (any letter, any digit, any digit) and replace with ^t^& (tab, find what text).
Originally posted on my iBlog 14 April 2003 (for interest only; I've since moved to TeXShop with NeoOffice to open Word files).
Summary: I typically use BBEdit for complicated text search-and-replace requests, using grep. But when I am stuck in MS Word, there are some options (which I took a while to find out about).
You can find general text-number combinations (e.g., any letter followed immediately by any two numbers) and replace them all with the same text and other things around that text, using "find what text" (^&).
Example: to add a tab before all strings of letter-number-number (e.g., A23), find ^$^#^# (any letter, any digit, any digit) and replace with ^t^& (tab, find what text).
