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#1
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Search and Replace
Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which is
shown in quotation marks, then make it bold? |
#2
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Search and Replace
Jackie wrote:
Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which is shown in quotation marks, then make it bold? Yes, someone knows. (Sorry, couldn't help it! g) Use a wildcard search, explained at http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. That is, click the More button in the Replace dialog and check the "Use wildcards" box. If your document uses only straight quotation marks, then the Find expression is simply ("*") and the Replace expression is \1 and press Ctrl+B in the Replace box so the label under it says "Font: Bold". Then click the Replace All button. If the document uses curly quotes -- what Word calls "smart quotes" although they sometimes aren't so smart -- you can use those characters in the Find expression either by copy/paste from the document or by typing in the ASCII codes: hold the Alt key while typing on the number pad 0147 for an opening quote and 0148 for a closing quote. That will give you the Find expression ("*") Finally, if the document has a mixture of straight and curly quotes, you can try changing them all in one go with the Find expression ([""]*[""]) If there are any unmatched pairs of quotes in the document, though, you could wind up with a very large chunk of non-quotation text in bold. Just remember that Undo will bring you back to the original state so you can fix the incorrect quotation mark and try again. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org |
#3
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Search and Replace
Generally speaking, " in the Find dialog will find either straight or curly
quotes. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. "Jay Freedman" wrote in message ... Jackie wrote: Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which is shown in quotation marks, then make it bold? Yes, someone knows. (Sorry, couldn't help it! g) Use a wildcard search, explained at http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. That is, click the More button in the Replace dialog and check the "Use wildcards" box. If your document uses only straight quotation marks, then the Find expression is simply ("*") and the Replace expression is \1 and press Ctrl+B in the Replace box so the label under it says "Font: Bold". Then click the Replace All button. If the document uses curly quotes -- what Word calls "smart quotes" although they sometimes aren't so smart -- you can use those characters in the Find expression either by copy/paste from the document or by typing in the ASCII codes: hold the Alt key while typing on the number pad 0147 for an opening quote and 0148 for a closing quote. That will give you the Find expression ("*") Finally, if the document has a mixture of straight and curly quotes, you can try changing them all in one go with the Find expression ([""]*[""]) If there are any unmatched pairs of quotes in the document, though, you could wind up with a very large chunk of non-quotation text in bold. Just remember that Undo will bring you back to the original state so you can fix the incorrect quotation mark and try again. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org |
#4
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Search and Replace
At least in my recent experiments in Word 2003, that's true in the regular
Find but not in a wildcard search. In a document with mixed straight and curly quotes, the " character in a wildcard Find will match only the straight quotes. This isn't the only difference. For example, wildcard searches are always case-sensitive, and there's the whole issue of caret-symbols like ^p that aren't valid in wildcards. So this wrinkle doesn't surprise me at all. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote: Generally speaking, " in the Find dialog will find either straight or curly quotes. "Jay Freedman" wrote in message ... Jackie wrote: Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which is shown in quotation marks, then make it bold? Yes, someone knows. (Sorry, couldn't help it! g) Use a wildcard search, explained at http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. That is, click the More button in the Replace dialog and check the "Use wildcards" box. If your document uses only straight quotation marks, then the Find expression is simply ("*") and the Replace expression is \1 and press Ctrl+B in the Replace box so the label under it says "Font: Bold". Then click the Replace All button. If the document uses curly quotes -- what Word calls "smart quotes" although they sometimes aren't so smart -- you can use those characters in the Find expression either by copy/paste from the document or by typing in the ASCII codes: hold the Alt key while typing on the number pad 0147 for an opening quote and 0148 for a closing quote. That will give you the Find expression ("*") Finally, if the document has a mixture of straight and curly quotes, you can try changing them all in one go with the Find expression ([""]*[""]) If there are any unmatched pairs of quotes in the document, though, you could wind up with a very large chunk of non-quotation text in bold. Just remember that Undo will bring you back to the original state so you can fix the incorrect quotation mark and try again. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org |
#5
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Search and Replace
Thanks for this. I don't know if I'm missing something but it doesn't
work. I get a message saying "The replace with text contains a group number which is out of range". My doc is all straight quotes. |
#6
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Search and Replace
Jackie wrote:
Thanks for this. I don't know if I'm missing something but it doesn't work. I get a message saying "The replace with text contains a group number which is out of range". My doc is all straight quotes. In that case, use the expression ("*") Be sure to include the parentheses -- the error message you got indicates that you left them out. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org |
#7
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Search and Replace
I did leave them out - thanks for your help, this works beautifully.
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