Quicker Multiple Replace Operations

Some commenters have not read previous comments. I can recommend Ken's first comment, right at the bottom of the following thread.

long winded process
in find replace window
1. tick mark "use wild card"
2. put A{2, } in find box
3. put A in replace box
click replace.

it will replace all two or more numbers of AA, AAA, AAA with a single A in one go
You can change A with any letter or digit or puncuation or control character you wish to replace.

and it should work alike in old and new word.

Ok,
I can't figure this out:

I have 400 pages of this type of text:
ART. X.XXX
Title of Article
Content Content Content Content...

Where X.XXX is a number such as "1.169".

I would like to make it into:
bold: (ART. X.XXX Title of Article )
Content Content Content etc

so far, I've managed to use wild cards etc to either change all ART. ?.??? into bold, or to replace all ^p^p with ^p...which did little to what I want to achieve.

I would need something that finds each and every ART. X.XXX ^P + all text on the following line

and replaces is with ART. X.XXX + The text on the following line, only on the same line as ART. and in bold.

any clues ?

I find this tip works. However the "," needs to be replaced by whatever you use as the separation character ";" in my case.
Also better to use "Number of occurrences" from the special list.
Has anyone a macro (as I am new at this) that replaces all double tabs, double spaces, paragraph and then spaces with singles.
Then it places all .?! with double space following it.
I often need it to clean up documents typed by others.

"Let's say that we don't know of Ken's superior method... "

If you want to get some idea of how powerful wildcards can be, have a look at the examples in the document file FindReplaceData.docx that is in the package that can be downloaded from www.editordie.com.au/editorkae

The document also contains a primer in the appendix on how to use wildcards.

Bryan

With the wildcards that I have given, you only need to click Replace All once. It will find any number of consecutive tabs and replace them by a single tab. The wild cards {2,} mean find two or more consecutive occurrences. If it were {1,} then it would find one or more which would still work as it would replace a single tab with a single tab.

As you can see it it very much faster than Allen's.

(Sorry about the last comment, I keep getting blocked and unblocked and I didn't want to type out my comment only to have it eaten)

Let's say that we don't know of Ken's superior method... it seems to me that replacing repeated groups of 2 tabs would be better than picking some high number of tabs and reducing it. This method has many benefits over Allen's:

* You can just keep pressing "Replace All" until you have 0 replacements.

* You don't have to worry that you didn't pick a high enough number of tabs to start.

* You don't have to change the number of tabs in between each run.

* While you may, depending on the exact distribution of tabs, have to do more replacements with the "low number" method, you won't have any "wasted" replacements. In Allen's example above starting at 16, if you only had, say, one doubled tab, the 16, 8, and 4 replacements would have no effect.

Pam
Yes, you can use ^t instead of ^9 Also, if you are replacing spaces you can use an actual space character, but ^32 is more visible.

LMcIntyre
It looks like you haven't ticked Use wildcards in the drop down menu under the More button. Alternatively there might be a space character in the Find box that can happen when you cut and paste and there is a space on the beginning or end of the string that you are pasting.

Ken's suggestion doesn't seem to work. I get the report that 0 replacements have been made. I cut and pasted his Find box contents, tried it without the brackets, without the comma, using ^t instead of ^9 ... and I always get the report that Word has finished and 0 replacements have been made. My document (which I created with several successive tabs) is unchanged.

Ken's suggestion doesn't seem to work. I get the report that 0 replacements have been made. I cut and pasted his Find box contents, tried it without the brackets, without the comma, using ^t instead of ^9 ... and I always get the report that Word has finished and 0 replacements have been made. My document (which I created with several successive tabs) is unchanged.

Conveniently, ^t, the regular search code for a tab works in wildcard searches--so we don't have to remember ^9.

But ^p, the regular search code for a paragraph mark, still does not. For that, we have to use ^013.

There is a much quicker way to replace multiple tabs with a single tab by using wildcards. In the Find box enter:
[^9]{2,}
In the Replace box put:
^9
Make sure that Use wildcards is ticked (click More >> if you can't see it).
Click Replace All.

Explanation: ^9 is the ASCII code for the Tab character. {2,} means for two or more occurrences of the preceding character.

You can use the same technique to replace multiple spaces with a single space. Instead of ^9 put ^32