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Enhancing the Find and Replace feature
Sidebar
How to efficiently
use "Find:" in the Find and Replace (F&R)
dialog
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Most often you probably just type a
word or phrase into the Find field, (possibly) make various selections
from the F&R dialog's menu, then either search for the item
with one of the Find buttons or replace the item in the document
with whatever you typed into the Replace field.
Alternatively, you can
(1) just select
the words, then bring up the F&R dialog, and the words will
be automatically entered in the Find field; or
(2) select some
words, then copy the selection to the clipboard (Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Insert),
and then paste (Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert) the words (including
embedded symbols or codes) from the document directly into the
Find field.
In most cases these two alternatives will
not present a problem.
Keep it short!
As with manually typing words into the F&R
field, pre-selecting words, or copying a selection and then pasting
it into the field is limited by the program to just 79
characters and spaces. If your intent was to search for this
selection in the document, this can present a problem if
the selection is longer than 79 characters/spaces. (Not to mention
that it probably is unnecessary to use such long strings in a
find operation!)
One issue is that if you pre-select text that
has more than 79 characters, WordPerfect will simply ignore it
and not put it in the Find field. This might cause you
to wonder why it didn't work when it often worked in the past
(with shorter selections).
The reason WordPerfect ignores such larger
blocks of selected material is that it assumes you want to search
in the selection, not search for
the selection. In fact, it will enable "Search in Selection"
in the F&R Options menu. It then waits for you to type something
in the Find field (it may already have placed the previous search
material there).
This is "working as designed," and
it might be what you want to do some of the time. Just be aware
of what WordPerfect assumes you want to do depending on the size
of your selection of material. To search for words in the document,
keep the selection short. Otherwise,WordPerfect will set things
up to search inside the selection for whatever you type in the
Find field.
The "truncation effect"
Another issue: "Characters" in the
context of selecting material also means WordPerfect symbols
and format codes. So if you copy a short selected block of text
that contains these codes, these items are counted toward
the 79 "character" limit when you paste them into
the Find field (or let WordPerfect automatically insert them
in the Find field with alternative #1 above).
Therefore, the sentence might become truncated
(cut off at the end) in the Find field. Since the F&R field
is relatively small, you might not notice this with a long
sentence, and therefore you might not replace what you expect
to replace when your click Replace or Replace All.
Moreover, as with merely selecting large blocks
of text, copying and pasting a selection larger that 79
characters/codes also causes WordPerfect to enable "Search
in Selection" in the F&R Options menu. This is probably
not what you want.
Again, it is best to keep your selections
short unless you really intend to search inside the selection
itself.
[Incidentally, finding and replacing large
blocks of text in often-used documents can be done with text
variables.]
An alternative
One way to work around the truncation problem
(other than to remember to keep selections shortet than 79 characters/codes)
is to first paste the copied selection elsewhere in the document
(or a blank document) as Unformatted text (see here
for more), re-select and re-copy the item, then paste the now
unformatted version into the Find field. Again, this might only
be needed for sentences that approach 79 characters -- counting
any embedded codes.
What about macro searches?
Note that macro search routines are
also limited to 79 characters in a SearchString() command;
however, storing a selection of text in a macro variable automatically
strips out any format codes. The Search (and Replace, if used)
operation will succeed since it looks for only the characters
and spaces -- up to the 79 character limit, of course. [See the
footnote below for a code snippet to test for
the length of the selected string.] |
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The standard Find and Replace dialog has to
be dragged from its position in the center of the screen if you
want to see the item found or the item to be replaced. Moreover,
it does not provide an easy way to replace (or format) just certain
instances of an item. Finally, having to repeatedly open the
F&R dialog (Edit, Find and Replace, or <Ctrl+F>) to
find or replace the same item is tedious.
Here's a tip posted by
Pam Britt on WordPerfect Universe that may help:
"To repeat a find once you have closed
the dialog box, you need not reopen the box. Simply press <Ctrl+Shift+F>
. . . to go to the next occurrence of your designated find text.
[Editor's note: If you use the DOS
keyboard instead of the standard Windows keyboard, you will need
to assign the "Find and Replace" and "Find Next"
features to <Ctrl+F> and <Ctrl+Shift+F>. See the
tip about assigning a macro, feature, program, or string of keystrokes
to a key or key combination (i.e., a "shortcut" or
"hot key"), here.]
This is an extremely efficient tool for the
kind of templates I have prepared over the years and through
many versions of WP, placing # symbols where I would eventually
need to add text and @ symbols where others would need to do
so. These and other symbols can be searched to easily and then
replaced on the run. (The "find" highlights the character
[but see below], and all you have to do is start typing
the new text -- no <Escape>, no <Delete>, no nothing.
If text (or a symbol) is highlighted and you need to change it,
start typing; if you need to go to the next instance, just press
<control>+<shift>+f again.)
It is also very simple to replace text using
this feature. All that's needed is for you to have already marked
for copying [i.e., copied to the clipboard with <Ctrl+C>]
the "replace with" text; then, when you hit on an instance
where you need the text replaced, paste the "replace with"
text over the found text [with <Ctrl+V>]...."
However, sometimes there is a problem with
the part of Pam's tip that says -
...The "find" highlights the character,
and all you have to do is start typing the new text...
Most of the time this will be true. But if
the user has set Edit > Find and Replace > Action to anything
other than "Select Match," or plays a macro that
sets the Action to another value, then the items found will
not be selected (i.e., highlighted in reverse color).
The Action menu in Find and Replace is "sticky": settings
will persist into the next WP session.
Here's a solution: Create (or download) and
play the Find and Replace macro below, which could be assigned to the <Ctrl+F>
and/or <F2> key instead of simply the "Find and Replace"
feature. It will reset the Find and Replace dialog's settings
first; then it will pop up the Find and Replace dialog. This
will be completely transparent to the user.
Tip: For your
convenience, download the following macro here.
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// Find and Replace.wcm
- Enhances the use of the standard Find and Replace feature by
ensuring that WordPerfect default settings for the F&R dialog
are reset -- especially the "Select Match" setting
in the Action menu, which normally leaves the item selected (and
thus more visible on screen) after it is found.
// For convenience, you can
assign this macro to the <Ctrl+F> key and/or <F2>
key to replace the standard methods of bringing up the Find and
Replace dialog.
If(?DocBlank)
Messagebox(;"Error";"Document is blank.";IconInformation!)
Go(End@)
Endif
OnCancel (End@)
pResetFindReplace ()
FindDlg ()
// Set the found item vertically
on screen -
QuickmarkSet ()
Display(On!)
QuickmarkFind ()
Label (End@)
Quit
Procedure pResetFindReplace
()
SearchString ("")
ReplaceString ("")
// Only one of these next 4 Match... commands can be active at
any one time:
// MatchPositionAfter ()
// MatchExtendSelection()
// MatchPositionBefore()
MatchSelection()
SearchFindWholeWordsOnly (No!)
MatchWithAttributes (No!)
ReplaceWithAttributes (No!)
SearchCaseSensitive (No!)
ReplaceWithCase (No!)
MatchWithFont (No!)
ReplaceWithFont (No!)
MatchWithFontSize (No!)
ReplaceWithFontSize (No!)
SearchInSelection (No!)
SearchWordForms (No!)
SearchWrap (No!)
MatchLimit (No!)
EndProcedure |
For help assigning macros to keystroke combinations
("shortcut keys") see here.
In addition to the tip above, here's another
related tip:
When the found item is shown selected on screen
you can use other standard formatting shortcut keys to quickly
make the instance bold, italic, underlined etc. Just press <Ctrl+B>
for bold, <Ctrl+I> for italic, etc., while
the item is selected. Then simply press <Ctrl+Shft+F> to
go to the next instance of the item, if desired.
You might even like to highlight found-and-selected
items in the current highlight color. Since there doesn't seem
to be a built-in feature in WP's keyboard editor that you can
directly assign to a shortcut key for this, use a macro instead.
You can assign the small macro below to, for example, the <Ctrl+H>
key to toggle highlighting on for the selected item.
Tip: For your
convenience, download the following macro here
(included with the Find and Replace macro above). Note:
If you use the Redaction Tool in the initial release of WordPerfect
X4, here
are some tips (click here
for the PDF version) when using normal highlighting (Tools, Highlight)
in the same document that is marked up for redaction (Tools,
Redaction).
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// Highlight Toggle.wcm
- Toggle selected text to highlighted text.
// Assign to <Ctrl+H> or similar key for convenience.
If(?BlockActive)
PosSelectBottom
HighlightToggle
Else
Messagebox(;"Highlight Toggle";"Select some
text first!";IconWarning!)
Endif
Quit |
Finally, note that redline or strikeout formatting
(not to be confused with similar effects produced during a file
Compare or Review) are not assigned to any standard shortcut
key. However, they can be assigned to one using the "Attribute
Redline" and "Attribute Strikeout" choices in
the Format feature list, found in the keyboard editor's Keyboard
Shortcuts window. Assigning them to <Alt+Ctrl+R> and <Alt+Ctrl+S>
or other preferred keys might be handy. Since they do not require
that the item be selected first, no macro such as Highlight Toggle
above is needed.
For help assigning macros to keystroke combinations
("shortcut keys") see here. |
Barry MacDonnell's