See http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


dk wrote:
We have no luck can you please explain all the characters, we don't
seem to find any line breaks lets try another way around all the
spaces that are less then 6 characters before the word ave. or st rd
ct. shall be replaced with odd charachter and the we will replace the
spaces with commas so there will be no spaces in the street field ,
please explain when you instruct what the barcket etc. is making
"Greg Maxey" wrote:

dk,

Part of the the problem is your line are separated by line breaks
vice paragraphs. The search string I provided previously will not
work with the line breaks. So first fine ^l and replace with ^13.
You don't need wild cards for that search. Now excluding appartment
numbers, which you didn't mention your first expample or telephone
numbers for that matter, your first example should come out like
this:

Porges,Samiel,1223 46th St.,Brooklyn,NY,11219,718-436-8449

Now there is the issue of the appartment number. You are going to
need to make it (or at least the space between it and the street
address, standout with higlight as well. In the example you
provided the following would work as a separate search string.

Using wildcards, find ( )[! ]yoursymbol That is
(space)[!space]yoursymbol The string is looking for a space, then
anything but a space, then your symbol. You will need to copy your
symbol from the document and paste it using CTRL+v into the find
what field.


--
Greg Maxey/Word MVP
A Peer in Peer to Peer Support

dk wrote:
we want no coma before 46th and before St. and 47th St. D.1 because
we want
to make a table so have all feilds seperate columns
Porges Samiel 1223 46th St. Brooklyn NY 11219 718-436-8449
Porges S. 1358 47th St. D.1 Brooklyn NY 11219 718.851-2791



"dk" wrote:

please see this sample we tried the first step but it didn't work
Porges Samiel 1223 46th St. Brooklyn NY 11219 718-436-8449
Porges S. 1358 47th St. D.1 Brooklyn NY 11219 718.851-2791


"Greg" wrote:

dk,

I don't know how or if this could be done in a single pass and a
better way may come along. Your example is not the best. I am
assuming that you have mulitple lines something like this

Mr Joe Jones 123 Miller St Boston MA 12345
Mrs Ann Smith 345 Park Ave Boston MA 12345
etc.

This could be done in multiple passes.

First make the street address stand out from the rest of the text.
Highlighting is one way to do this.

Using wildcards find: [0-9]*Ave
Replace with ^& - Now with the cursor still in the replace
field, click format highlight.

Relace all

You will have to repeat a similar process for St, Blvd, Lane,
Place, Court, etc. If you use Ave. Rd. St. Blvd. Ct. etc, the you
could just use [0-9]*.

OK, next we want to replace spaces that are not highlighted with
commas.
You don't need wildcards for this bit. With the cursor in the
find field type a single space, click FormatHighlight and Format
Highlight. You should see "Not Highlight" displayed under the
field field. In the Replace field type a comma and use
FormatHighlight to clear the Hightlight formatting from under the
replace with window. Click replace all.

Next you want to remove hightlighing. Click in the find fiedl and
remove the space. Click FormatHightlight to display Highlighted
under the find field. Click in the replace window and clear all
content. Click FormatHighlight to display Not highligthed below
the replace with field. Click replace all.

HTH.

"dk" wrote:

We have a document that we want to replace all spaces to
commas,but 1 exception that the space which is before the word
Ave
or St and also the 1 word prior to those words shall also not be
replaced ex: mr,John,Doe,123 45 St,Boston,MA,10234
how can we do that using wildcards etc.?