Finding specific field

[David Wolff]

Hi all,

I have several zillion overstrike characters that generate accented
characters, left over in many many documents from the Old Days.
Word:Mac 2004 (version 11.2) thoughtfully updates these to EQ fields,
for example "{ EQ \o(c,^) }".

Rather than pasting a Unicode character over these one by one, I'd
really like to do a find and replace. But I can't paste the field into
the "Find" box, and the old "Find contents-of-clipboard" seems to have
disappeared. Is there any way to find a specific field and replace it
or at least convert it to something else? (I can find *any* field with
"^d", but there are several kinds, one for each accented letter.)

Thanks --

David

(Remove "xx" to reply.)

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi David,

Be sure to show field codes first. Basically, just type the text of the
field, replacing the brackets with ^d at the beginning. If you select only
the text of the field and not the brackets, you can copy and paste into the
Find dialog (using keyboard shortcuts).

In my quick test, putting "^d eq \o(c,¯)" in the Find box found that field,
but not these fields:
eq \o(x,¯)
eq \o(c,^)

However, the ^ has a special meaning in Word F&R. To escape it, type two
carets ^^ instead of one when searching for the example you give. If you
copy into the dialog, Word seems to handle this.

You can't Find contents of clipboard, but you can still Replace with
contents of clipboard, if that matters.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi all,

I have several zillion overstrike characters that generate accented
characters, left over in many many documents from the Old Days.
Word:Mac 2004 (version 11.2) thoughtfully updates these to EQ fields,
for example "{ EQ \o(c,^) }".

Rather than pasting a Unicode character over these one by one, I'd
really like to do a find and replace. But I can't paste the field into
the "Find" box, and the old "Find contents-of-clipboard" seems to have
disappeared. Is there any way to find a specific field and replace it
or at least convert it to something else? (I can find *any* field with
"^d", but there are several kinds, one for each accented letter.)

You *nearly* got there. A little further experiment shows that
^d eq \o (c^^) in the find what box will do what you want.

Note: It appears that ^d deals with the field thing, front and back
{..}, and then it goes on to match the contents you specified, so the
above string won't match n overstruck with a circumflex. Which is
spiffing is it not?

You need 2 circumflexes to detect one, because the first one is an
escape character. For instance you already told Word that you want a
field with ^d rather than the sequence of characters ^d. ^^ 'escapes to
the special character literally ^.

Of course you must have the field source displayed - rather than their
result - for the search to work (alt-f9 for the mouse averse)

 

[David Wolff]

Hi David,

Be sure to show field codes first. Basically, just type the text of the
field, replacing the brackets with ^d at the beginning. If you select only
the text of the field and not the brackets, you can copy and paste into the
Find dialog (using keyboard shortcuts).

In my quick test, putting "^d eq \o(c,¯)" in the Find box found that field,
but not these fields:
eq \o(x,¯)
eq \o(c,^)

However, the ^ has a special meaning in Word F&R. To escape it, type two
carets ^^ instead of one when searching for the example you give. If you
copy into the dialog, Word seems to handle this.

You can't Find contents of clipboard, but you can still Replace with
contents of clipboard, if that matters.

Thank you. I hadn't thought of searching on a field-plus-partial
contents. This solves the problem!

I don't need to search for the carets, since there is no letter that
comes with more than one kind of accent in Esperanto; a wildcard there
is fine. (Actually I think I have option-m true carets instead of
shift-6 uparrows, but since they're all going away...)

--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ:

Thanks --

David

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