Find/Change Features

[Matt_Wiseman@adobeforums.com]

Is it possible to find/change with "wildcards" and/or "find what text" as one would do in MS Word.

For instance, if I wanted to add the text string " hello" to the end of every styled headline, in MS Word, I would search for the style and replace with the "find what text" marker and " hello."

Or, if I whated to turn all versions of "toasting" "toasted" and "toaster" red, in word i would search for "toast*" and replace with the color change.

I see a lot of features in the find/replace dialog, but it's not quite as rich as word.

Any help? Am I missing something?

I routinely create my own markup tags for text, especially in going from excel to a document. I'd love to see richer find/change options.

Maybe it's there and I have not found it.

Thanks

[Mike Witherell]

Have you clicked on More Options?

[Matt_Wiseman@adobeforums.com]

Might as well ask if I breath.

I create a lot of directories and newspapers. With directories, I have found that importing large databases with style tags does not always work, so I create my own.

I append "<#>" to the front of a particular field in a record, the find/change "<#>" with a style, then delete "<#>". (See note below).

This is much more reliable than appending style tags and converting them on import. That strategy works on small documents, but not large one.

What I'm out to do is slightly more advance than find/replace on style properties. It's richer text properties I'm looking for.

Note: I am playing with the merge features of ID. That might be a better strategy than the one above, which I concived back in PageMaker days.

[Gerald_Singelmann@adobeforums.com]

Might as well ask if I breath.




If you know all the options in the find/change dialog, why do you ask?

Seriously: InDesign cannot use wildcards in the way some other programs can. The best bet for you currently is to start learning to script.
What ever Adobe may or may not build into InDesign, scripting will help you anyway to automate your processes. And it would help you now to get what you want.

Look here <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.3bbf275d> for people that can help you get started

[Matt_Wiseman@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for yor reply. I'll look into scripting. I was hoping there might be some undocumented way to do wildcards or "find what text"... Back in the day these features were undocument in Word.

[Malcolm_Whild@adobeforums.com]

Matt,

There are limited wildcard options in your search/replace dialog - if you use the pop-ups next to the text fields you will see 'Any Digit', 'Any Letter', 'Any Character', and 'White Space'. For your toasting example, it could be done, although probably in a couple of hits.

As Gerald suggested, scripting is a much more powerful way to search and replace.

Mal

[Sandee_Cohen@adobeforums.com]

For instance, if I wanted to add the text string " hello" to the end of
every styled headline, in MS Word, I would search for the style and replace
with the "find what text" marker and " hello."




I'm quite adept at using Word's Replace dialog box, but I'm unfamiliar with the "'find what text' marker". However if I needed to do what you wanted, I do it in InDesign as follows:

I would fill the Find field as
^p [formatted with the paragraph style for the headline]

I would fill the Change field as
hello ^p

I would then click Change All.

Or, if I whated to turn all versions of "toasting" "toasted" and "toaster"
red, in Word I would search for "toast*" and replace with the color change.




Yes, you're right. ID does not have the "Find All Word Forms" command for finding text. It's a very cool feature.

However, the search could be done with several searches and the wildcards for "toast^?^?^?" and then for "toast^?^?"

I see a lot of features in the find/replace dialog, but it's not quite
as rich as Word.




Only slightly less rich.

[by_Buko@adobeforums.com]

Or you could bring the text back into Word

do your thing and bring it back into ID.

[Nini Tjäder]

Buko - bringing it back to Word and in again to ID is not really a solution if you have done any formatting of the text in ID as you would lose that in the process.

[Klaus_Scharfenstein@adobeforums.com]

Buko - bringing it back to Word and in again to ID is not really a solution
if you have done any formatting of the text in ID as you would lose that
in the process.




Wouldn't it be helpful to use ID's text-only window (haven't used it often, so don't even know the correct term for sure) for pasting in WORD text without superceding the original ID text's formatting ?

Klaus

[Matthew_Wiseman@adobeforums.com]

That's a good tip I had not thought of. I knew the "^p" carried the style attribute but had not thought of using that. Thanks.

I can think of several practical uses for that.

[Matthew_Wiseman@adobeforums.com]

That's a good tip I had not thought of. I knew the "^p" carried the style attribute but had not thought of using that. Thanks.

I can think of several practical uses for that.

Try the "Find what text" marker in word. Lots of great uses for it. It's in the list of options in the drop down menu under replace. It puts the exact text either input in the find field or the text found by the properties of the find field.

[Richard_Sohanchyk@adobeforums.com]

I may be wrong but I could have sworn there was a plug-in for search and replace that was much more robust than IDs. Let me go google. Be back shortly.

[Sandee_Cohen@adobeforums.com]

Richard,

You may be thinking of the script that ships with ID that allows you to gang up multiple searches with one go.