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#1
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Searching for anything BUT a particular character
I have a very large document (currently 644 pages) that was written by a
flatulent weasel who thinks punctuation is only for liberal arts majors and other wimps. One of his very common errors is to omit periods at the end of paragraphs. Is there any way to search for "*^p" where * stands for any character BUT a period? If I could systematically search for all paragraphs that end with anything but a period I could make sure I don't miss any instances of this error. (I've already deleted Space^p and Space-Space^p.) I'm still using Word 2003 on XP Professional. Thanks, Fred |
#2
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Searching for anything BUT a particular character
Turn on wildcard searching and use the search term
([!.])^13 and the replacement term \1.^p The expression [!.] means "any character that isn't a period". See http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Idaho Word Man wrote: I have a very large document (currently 644 pages) that was written by a flatulent weasel who thinks punctuation is only for liberal arts majors and other wimps. One of his very common errors is to omit periods at the end of paragraphs. Is there any way to search for "*^p" where * stands for any character BUT a period? If I could systematically search for all paragraphs that end with anything but a period I could make sure I don't miss any instances of this error. (I've already deleted Space^p and Space-Space^p.) I'm still using Word 2003 on XP Professional. Thanks, Fred |
#3
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Searching for anything BUT a particular character
Thanks. You've just opened up a new world of possibilities for me.
"Jay Freedman" wrote: Turn on wildcard searching and use the search term ([!.])^13 and the replacement term \1.^p The expression [!.] means "any character that isn't a period". See http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Idaho Word Man wrote: I have a very large document (currently 644 pages) that was written by a flatulent weasel who thinks punctuation is only for liberal arts majors and other wimps. One of his very common errors is to omit periods at the end of paragraphs. Is there any way to search for "*^p" where * stands for any character BUT a period? If I could systematically search for all paragraphs that end with anything but a period I could make sure I don't miss any instances of this error. (I've already deleted Space^p and Space-Space^p.) I'm still using Word 2003 on XP Professional. Thanks, Fred |
#4
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Searching for anything BUT a particular character
Hi Jay.
I use this find formula all the time but I wonder if you can help with an extention of this wildcard use. How can I get this to not just to ignore Periods (Full Stop) immediately followed by paragraph mark, but also Question Marks and Colons at the same time? Many thanks for your assistance. DeanH "Idaho Word Man" wrote: Thanks. You've just opened up a new world of possibilities for me. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Turn on wildcard searching and use the search term ([!.])^13 and the replacement term \1.^p The expression [!.] means "any character that isn't a period". See http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Idaho Word Man wrote: I have a very large document (currently 644 pages) that was written by a flatulent weasel who thinks punctuation is only for liberal arts majors and other wimps. One of his very common errors is to omit periods at the end of paragraphs. Is there any way to search for "*^p" where * stands for any character BUT a period? If I could systematically search for all paragraphs that end with anything but a period I could make sure I don't miss any instances of this error. (I've already deleted Space^p and Space-Space^p.) I'm still using Word 2003 on XP Professional. Thanks, Fred |
#5
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Searching for anything BUT a particular character
Hi Dean,
You can list as many characters as you like within the square brackets. If any of them are "special" wildcards as described in Graham's article, they have to be preceded by a backslash to say you're searching for the actual character and not things that match the wildcard; in your case, only the question mark is in that class. So the search term would be ([!\?.:])^13 to ignore any question mark followed by a paragraph mark, any period followed by a paragraph mark, or any colon followed by a paragraph mark. I can't quite tell from your question whether you also want to ignore question marks and colons that are *not* followed by a paragraph mark. I don't think that can be combined with the previous search term in one expression. DeanH wrote: Hi Jay. I use this find formula all the time but I wonder if you can help with an extention of this wildcard use. How can I get this to not just to ignore Periods (Full Stop) immediately followed by paragraph mark, but also Question Marks and Colons at the same time? Many thanks for your assistance. DeanH "Idaho Word Man" wrote: Thanks. You've just opened up a new world of possibilities for me. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Turn on wildcard searching and use the search term ([!.])^13 and the replacement term \1.^p The expression [!.] means "any character that isn't a period". See http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Idaho Word Man wrote: I have a very large document (currently 644 pages) that was written by a flatulent weasel who thinks punctuation is only for liberal arts majors and other wimps. One of his very common errors is to omit periods at the end of paragraphs. Is there any way to search for "*^p" where * stands for any character BUT a period? If I could systematically search for all paragraphs that end with anything but a period I could make sure I don't miss any instances of this error. (I've already deleted Space^p and Space-Space^p.) I'm still using Word 2003 on XP Professional. Thanks, Fred |
#6
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Searching for anything BUT a particular character
That is it, Jay, "you're the man"
You got the message spot-on. I always forget about the slash to denote multiple "individual" characters, that precede a paragraph mark. Many thanks DeanH "Jay Freedman" wrote: Hi Dean, You can list as many characters as you like within the square brackets. If any of them are "special" wildcards as described in Graham's article, they have to be preceded by a backslash to say you're searching for the actual character and not things that match the wildcard; in your case, only the question mark is in that class. So the search term would be ([!\?.:])^13 to ignore any question mark followed by a paragraph mark, any period followed by a paragraph mark, or any colon followed by a paragraph mark. I can't quite tell from your question whether you also want to ignore question marks and colons that are *not* followed by a paragraph mark. I don't think that can be combined with the previous search term in one expression. DeanH wrote: Hi Jay. I use this find formula all the time but I wonder if you can help with an extention of this wildcard use. How can I get this to not just to ignore Periods (Full Stop) immediately followed by paragraph mark, but also Question Marks and Colons at the same time? Many thanks for your assistance. DeanH "Idaho Word Man" wrote: Thanks. You've just opened up a new world of possibilities for me. "Jay Freedman" wrote: Turn on wildcard searching and use the search term ([!.])^13 and the replacement term \1.^p The expression [!.] means "any character that isn't a period". See http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. Idaho Word Man wrote: I have a very large document (currently 644 pages) that was written by a flatulent weasel who thinks punctuation is only for liberal arts majors and other wimps. One of his very common errors is to omit periods at the end of paragraphs. Is there any way to search for "*^p" where * stands for any character BUT a period? If I could systematically search for all paragraphs that end with anything but a period I could make sure I don't miss any instances of this error. (I've already deleted Space^p and Space-Space^p.) I'm still using Word 2003 on XP Professional. Thanks, Fred |
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