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Mac Forum / Applications / Excel / September 2007Replacing special characters
I've a spreadsheet created by someone else where the individual has inexplicably stuck an asterisk in front of entries in some fields. I initially thought this was a no brainer, that a simple find and replace all would do the trick, but apparently Excel treats the asterisk as a wild card so it searched and repleaced everything. Not good, particularly since there are almost 14,000 entries in this sheet. Is there a quick and simple way to find and replace special characters? > I've a spreadsheet created by someone else where the individual has > inexplicably stuck an asterisk in front of entries in some fields. I [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Is there a quick and simple way to find and replace special characters? Take a look at XL Help ("Wildcard characters you can use to find text or numbers") for the escape character needed. > > I've a spreadsheet created by someone else where the individual has > > inexplicably stuck an asterisk in front of entries in some fields. I [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > Take a look at XL Help ("Wildcard characters you can use to find text or > numbers") for the escape character needed. Ahhhh,, be nice: Excel, for reasons known only to the morons in Redmond, use "~" as the escape char. Word conforms properly to regexp rules.  SignatureTeam EM to the rescue! mailto:carl@Team-EM.com http://www.team-em.com > Ahhhh,, be nice: ????? Why is giving a reference to on-line help less nice than giving a snarky snippet? Give someone a fish, and all that... > Word conforms properly to regexp rules. Now THAT isn't nice! Unless by "regexp rules" you mean 'crippled and utterly non-standard regular expression syntax'. Word's irregular expression wildcards don't come close to conforming with any accepted regexp standards (e.g., Unix, POSIX ERE, Perl). It's impossible to configure Word's wildcards into configurations that would be simple in the others. Regardless, the tilde works. Thanks. > > Ahhhh,, be nice: > [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > impossible to configure Word's wildcards into configurations that would > be simple in the others. Really? like 2[a-j] ? It's not a perfect match but those familiar w/ regexp won't take much time to understand Word's Find/Replace syntax. SignatureTeam EM to the rescue! mailto:carl@Team-EM.com http://www.team-em.com > Really? like 2[a-j] ? It's not a perfect match but those familiar > w/ regexp won't take much time to understand Word's Find/Replace syntax. Those familiar with regexp, in my experience, generally find themselves frustrated with Word's non-standard version. However, de gustibus non disputandum est. If it works for you, that's great. |
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