In Find and Replace: How To Find Any Combination Of Characters

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Rafael Montserrat - 12 May 2008 20:20 GMT

OS 10.4.11
Ibook G4
1.5 GB Ram
Word 2004

Hi,

In Find and Replace, how do I find *any* word, character, digit, or
combination of any of those? I see that for "Any Character", the code is
^?, but I can't figure out how that works.

Thanks, Rafael

PS. Would all of us please leave the entire string of posts on each email?

Reply to this Message

John McGhie - 13 May 2008 12:29 GMT

Hi Rafael:

At this stage, I need to direct you to search the Word help for the word
"wildcards" and read both articles that appear, carefully and fully.

These topics describe the simplified version of Regular Expressions that
Word's Find/Replace implements.

If you know RegEx, you will be right at home. If not, you need to study it
very carefully, and experiment.

It helps greatly to have a very accurate and definitive "problem statement"
before you start. Remember that you are programming a computer when you do
this. For example, the problem statement in your question cannot be
satisfied -- it is the RegEx equivalent of a "divide by zero" error. If you
managed to code it, the fine would find the entire content of the document.

The wild card ^? matches any single character, but only ONE character in the
indicated position. Contrast this with * , which matches "any number of
characters" in the indicated position.

Cheers

On 13/05/08 5:20 AM, in article C44DE68F.7726%rmnospam@abc.com, "Rafael
Montserrat" <rmnospam@abc.com> wrote:

> OS 10.4.11
> Ibook G4
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> PS. Would all of us please leave the entire string of posts on each email?

Signature

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:john@mcghie.name

Reply to this Message

Rafael Montserrat - 14 May 2008 03:13 GMT

Hi John,

Thanks. I'll do that.

Searching Word help for ³wildcards" brings up five leads. They all seem
pertinant to what I need to know, but you mentioned there being only two
articles. Which two here might you be referring to?

1 Troubleshooting finding & replacing text or formatting
2 Advanced search methods
3 When I use wildcards, Word doesn¹t find certain text.
4 When I use wildcards, Word can¹t search for certain items.
5.Word doesn¹t find the item I¹m searching for.

As for RegEx, I know nothing about it. I did a search in Help. Twenty
items came up, but in opening some at random I didn't see 'RegEx'. In other
words, in Help, I didn't find a place to study RegEx.

I did a Google search and came up with this page,
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=RegEx&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Do you recommend that I sift through these Google items myself, in which
case do you recommend any particular ones? Do you want to clue me in? Can
you direct me to a MVP paper on the topic?

Finally, can I send a screenshot in the body of an email to the newsgroup?
I took a screenshot of something I wanted to sent to NG that wouldn't
copy-paste.

Again, Thanks, Rafael :-)

On 5/13/08 4:29 AM, in article C44FB1CE.14CF5%john@mcghie.name, "John
McGhie" <john@mcghie.name> wrote:

> Hi Rafael:
>
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
>>
>> PS. Would all of us please leave the entire string of posts on each email?

Reply to this Message

John McGhie - 15 May 2008 11:24 GMT

Hi Rafael:

All five. Three of them were not there when I looked :-)

The online help is currently expanding quite quickly, as a result of user
requests.

Cheers

On 14/05/08 11:43 AM, in article C44F98E1.7B2D%rmnospam@abc.com, "Rafael
Montserrat" <rmnospam@abc.com> wrote:

> Hi John,
>
[quoted text clipped - 70 lines]
>>>
>>> PS. Would all of us please leave the entire string of posts on each email?

Signature

Reply to this Message

Rafael Montserrat - 16 May 2008 00:00 GMT

Hi John.

OK. All five.

Are you naming Word Help "online help" below? I think Word Help is within
the Word program, and not something that's accessed online, on the web.

As I understand it, There are four sources for help with the Mac programs I
use:
The application's Help.
Newsgroup correspondence (as we're doing here).
MVP publications online.
Apple help topics.

Also, would you please give me a lead to an explanation of RegEx. In my
post below, in the three paragraphs starting at:

>> As for RegEx, I know nothing about it. I...

three leads: a google search for RegEx and what I found in Word under RegEx,
none of which topics contained the word RegEx.

Finally, is it possible to send a screenshot in a post to a newsgroup?

Thanks much, Rafael

On 5/15/08 3:24 AM, in article C4524558.14ED3%john@mcghie.name, "John
McGhie" <john@mcghie.name> wrote:

> Hi Rafael:
>
[quoted text clipped - 82 lines]
>>>>
>>>> PS. Would all of us please leave the entire string of posts on each email?

Reply to this Message

John McGhie - 16 May 2008 11:55 GMT

Hi Rafael:

Yes, I am talking about Word's "online help". Office 2008 help is almost
entirely online. Only the simplistic "Getting started" topics are actually
contained in the application.

This is new in Office 2008. Unless you allow the help system to go online
to get the content, you will see almost nothing. Most topics will be
missing. The idea is to allow Microsoft to dynamically update the help.

When you access the help online, they can track which topics users are
requesting. If they get 100 requests for "Regular Expressions", they will
assign an author to write the topic and it will magically appear.

In fact, the Author has already been assigned, and he tries to look in here
when he gets time, to see what people are asking about. And since I have
his email address, I mercilessly pepper the poor fellow with requests :-)

The Help>Send Feedback command ends up in the same group. Any feedback that
is not simply abusive is likely to result in a help topic being added.

When *I* Googled "regex" I got 6.9 million articles returned. Any of the
top ten will get you started. I am sorry, but there needs to be a limit to
how much work it is fair and reasonable to ask the MVPs to do for you. At
University, you would spend a couple of semesters learning Regular
Expressions as part of a computer science degree. I do not think it is
reasonable to ask us to post the content of that course here. :-)

Depending on "how" you send the screenshot, yes it is "possible" to send a
screenshot to a newsgroup. However, I strongly suggest that you do not do
that here! 1) You WILL get screamed at by the Thought Police and the 'Net
Nazis. The crescendo will be deafening. 2) Most people who spend a lot of
time in these groups routinely block any post with an attachment. This
prevents the silly little children who think we work for Microsoft from
sending us a copy of their latest virus.

So please don't add any screenshots. I don't see any post containing an
attachment of any kind; and you will get flamed :-)

Cheers

On 16/05/08 8:30 AM, in article C4520EA6.7D09%rmnospam@abc.com, "Rafael
Montserrat" <rmnospam@abc.com> wrote:

> Hi John.
>
[quoted text clipped - 112 lines]
>>>>> PS. Would all of us please leave the entire string of posts on each
>>>>> email?

Signature

Reply to this Message

Rafael Montserrat - 17 May 2008 18:44 GMT

On 5/16/08 3:55 AM, in article C4539E2F.15013%john@mcghie.name, "John
McGhie" <john@mcghie.name> wrote:

Hi John,

> Hi Rafael:
>
> Yes, I am talking about Word's "online help". Office 2008 help is almost
> entirely online. Only the simplistic "Getting started" topics are actually
> contained in the application.

I'll be using Office 2004 student edition awhile longer.

> This is new in Office 2008. Unless you allow the help system to go online
> to get the content, you will see almost nothing. Most topics will be
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
> Expressions as part of a computer science degree. I do not think it is
> reasonable to ask us to post the content of that course here. :-)

I didn't sign up for the course. I respect your wishes/policy. :-)

You MVPs are already providing a remarkable service. I repeat saying that,
or something like it, periodically ... I've just gotten so much help and
problem resolution here that I intend to keep on saying it.

> Depending on "how" you send the screenshot, yes it is "possible" to send a
> screenshot to a newsgroup. However, I strongly suggest that you do not do
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> prevents the silly little children who think we work for Microsoft from
> sending us a copy of their latest virus.

Got'cha. I was thinking of sending a screenshot in the body of the email.
That means turning on HTML anyway, second opportunity to get flamed.

> So please don't add any screenshots. I don't see any post containing an
> attachment of any kind; and you will get flamed :-)

I hate getting screamed at. Ruins my day.

Regards, Rafael

> Cheers
>
[quoted text clipped - 122 lines]
>>>>>> PS. Would all of us please leave the entire string of posts on each
>>>>>> email?

Reply to this Message

Mac Forum / Applications / Word / May 2008

In Find and Replace: How To Find Any Combination Of Characters