Replacing special characters

[Robin]

I've a spreadsheet created by someone else where the individual has
inexplicably stuck an asterisk in front of entries in some fields. I
initially thought this was a no brainer, that a simple find and
replace all would do the trick, but apparently Excel treats the
asterisk as a wild card so it searched and repleaced everything. Not
good, particularly since there are almost 14,000 entries in this
sheet.

Is there a quick and simple way to find and replace special characters?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I've a spreadsheet created by someone else where the individual has
inexplicably stuck an asterisk in front of entries in some fields. I
initially thought this was a no brainer, that a simple find and
replace all would do the trick, but apparently Excel treats the
asterisk as a wild card so it searched and repleaced everything. Not
good, particularly since there are almost 14,000 entries in this
sheet.

Is there a quick and simple way to find and replace special characters?

Take a look at XL Help ("Wildcard characters you can use to find text or
numbers") for the escape character needed.

 

[Carl Witthoft]

Take a look at XL Help ("Wildcard characters you can use to find text or
numbers") for the escape character needed.

Ahhhh,, be nice: Excel, for reasons known only to the morons in
Redmond, use "~" as the escape char. Word conforms properly to regexp
rules.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Ahhhh,, be nice:

?????

Why is giving a reference to on-line help less nice than giving a snarky
snippet?

Give someone a fish, and all that...

Word conforms properly to regexp rules.

Now THAT isn't nice!

Unless by "regexp rules" you mean 'crippled and utterly non-standard
regular expression syntax'.

Word's irregular expression wildcards don't come close to conforming
with any accepted regexp standards (e.g., Unix, POSIX ERE, Perl). It's
impossible to configure Word's wildcards into configurations that would
be simple in the others.

 

[Robin]

Regardless, the tilde works. Thanks.

 

[Carl Witthoft]

?????

Why is giving a reference to on-line help less nice than giving a snarky
snippet?

Give someone a fish, and all that...


Now THAT isn't nice!

Unless by "regexp rules" you mean 'crippled and utterly non-standard
regular expression syntax'.

Word's irregular expression wildcards don't come close to conforming
with any accepted regexp standards (e.g., Unix, POSIX ERE, Perl). It's
impossible to configure Word's wildcards into configurations that would
be simple in the others.

Really? like 2[a-j] ? It's not a perfect match but those familiar
w/ regexp won't take much time to understand Word's Find/Replace syntax.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Really? like 2[a-j] ? It's not a perfect match but those familiar
w/ regexp won't take much time to understand Word's Find/Replace syntax.

Those familiar with regexp, in my experience, generally find themselves
frustrated with Word's non-standard version.

However, de gustibus non disputandum est. If it works for you, that's
great.