[Tony Jollans[_2_]]

Spaces are allowed within the "*" bit. You are looking for the anything
starting at the beginning of a word (*) followed by a single non-space
([! ]) followed by "dest" at the end of a word. You have found a whole
string of stuff followed by "l" (a non-space) followed by "dest".

I don't see why you can't just look for wouldest, but what you need to do
to the search string you have is make it look for a sequence of non-space
characters ... [! ]@dest

--
Enjoy,
Tony

www.WordArticles.com

"Paul B." wrote in message
...
Hi, I'm running Word '03 on WinXP sp3.

I'm trying to catch the word "wouldest" in a multiword selection and
convert it to "would". I've got the find/replace dialog open,
wildcards checked, all other options cleared, but this Find string:

(*)[! ]dest

is pulling in the entire selection up to and including the word
"wouldest". If I hit Next the selection recedes by one word at its
beginning. The way I see it, the [! ] should kill finding multiple
words, since the space is not allowed. Do I have that right? I must be
doing something wrong.

Any input would be appreciated.
p.

[Tony Jollans[_2_]]

Ignore me! I saw the original post and replied without registering that Jay
had already given virtually the same answer.

--
Enjoy,
Tony

www.WordArticles.com

"Tony Jollans" wrote in message
...
Spaces are allowed within the "*" bit. You are looking for the anything
starting at the beginning of a word (*) followed by a single non-space
([! ]) followed by "dest" at the end of a word. You have found a whole
string of stuff followed by "l" (a non-space) followed by "dest".

I don't see why you can't just look for wouldest, but what you need to
do to the search string you have is make it look for a sequence of
non-space characters ... [! ]@dest

--
Enjoy,
Tony

www.WordArticles.com

"Paul B." wrote in message
...
Hi, I'm running Word '03 on WinXP sp3.

I'm trying to catch the word "wouldest" in a multiword selection and
convert it to "would". I've got the find/replace dialog open,
wildcards checked, all other options cleared, but this Find string:

(*)[! ]dest

is pulling in the entire selection up to and including the word
"wouldest". If I hit Next the selection recedes by one word at its
beginning. The way I see it, the [! ] should kill finding multiple
words, since the space is not allowed. Do I have that right? I must be
doing something wrong.

Any input would be appreciated.
p.