Wild card characters are not working as expected in MS word 2007

[Paresh S]

Hello,

I am using MSword 2007-evaluation version

I was doing some R&D on wildcard character "?"
As per my knowledge, following is the usage of "?"

Consider a doc file containing

define text string
define text String
text
test

Select "use wildcards" option from MS word. The "Match Case" checkbox is
disabled

Now search for t?s. Actually it should search for words which
1. begin with t AND
2. have a single character after t AND
3 have s at the end

Issue1:
The search returns t<space>s from "text string" on first line (this is a
BUG) and "test" in the last line (this is correct)

Issue 2:
If the above behavior is not a bug, then the search should also highlight
letter from the second line: "define text String" (where there is capital S)
Although the "match case" check box is disabled, the search does not return
t<space><Capital S> from the second line

Issue 3:
The check/uncheck of "Ignore white space characters" does not have any
effect on the searches if we use wildcards
The search returns results with whitespaces, even if we check/uncheck that
check box

In that case, we can disable the "Ignore white space characters" check box,
when "use wildcards" is checked.

Please let me know your thoughts on the same


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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...3&dg=microsoft.public.word.application.errors

 

[Tony Jollans]

1. Space is a character so Word is correctly matching your pattern.

2. Case sensitivity is not relevant to wildcard searches - that is why the
option is unavailable. Your assumption that the option not being available
means the option is switched off is false.

3. You are correct. Ignore white space should be greyed out when use
wildcards is checked. It would cause havoc with many wildcard searches if
available.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Tony,

For item #3, it's interesting that the choices for

Ignore punctuation characters
Ignore white-space characters

are appearing in the Find dialog in Word 2007 full time, perhaps that's a bug?

In Word 2003, those same two settings were in
Tools=>Options=>Japanese Find
and that tab (and thus those settings) would only be available if Japanese language support was enabled in Word.

What those options were for when selected in the Japanese Find settings was:

Ignore punctuation characters: 'Searches without distinguishing between punctuation characters'

Ignore Whitespace characters: 'Searches without distinguishing between characters used as blank spaces, such as full-width spaces,
half-width spaces, and tabs.

and they had no effect on search through other input language text.

============
<<"Tony Jollans" <My forename at my surname dot com> wrote in message 1. Space is a character so Word is correctly matching your pattern.

2. Case sensitivity is not relevant to wildcard searches - that is why the
option is unavailable. Your assumption that the option not being available
means the option is switched off is false.

3. You are correct. Ignore white space should be greyed out when use
wildcards is checked. It would cause havoc with many wildcard searches if
available.

--
Enjoy,
Tony>>

--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[Tony Jollans]

Interesting, Bob.

Not knowing any Japanese I can't easily test to see what actually happens (I
did try without any success) but you are correct that they appear to have no
effect on other languages.

The description you quote for 2003 does not describe their action in 2007 -
ignoring, and not distinguishing, are very different behaviours. Without
documentation it is, of course, impossible to say whether or not there is a
bug anywhere or a deliberate change in behaviour - although not greying out
ineffective options could perhaps be described as impolite.

 

[Paresh S]

Thanks Tony, for looking into it

some more information on issue 2
Issue2: While testing it, i had not* checked the "match case" checkbox. So
it should ignore the case. What do you think?

~Paresh

 

[Tony Jollans]

Case is simply not relevant to wildcard searches. They do not see alphabetic
characters and know of no connections between them. Whether or not the box
was checked before you selected "Use wildcards" is irrelevant.

If the option was not there at all - if it had never been there - what
behaviour would you have expected? Because you know the option is available
in other circumstances you are making assumptions about it; you are assuming
that not matching case (treating s and S, for example, as the same) is some
kind of default behaviour that you must switch off - it isn't. In wildcard
searches s and S are different. Period.

 

[Paresh S]

Cool.. that was a very good piece of information (somthing new that I learnt)

Regarding Issue 3- which you also feel is a Bug.. what should be the next
step? (I am new to this forum hence i am not sure of the channel to be used
to report it to MicroSoft)

Thanks,
Paresh

 

[Tony Jollans]

It is a very minor issue really, although I can see that it could confuse.

No doubt there is an official channel you could use but, as an MVP, I have a
short cut and I have raised the issue with Microsoft. With luck, it will get
fixed in the next release - non-critical bugs rarely get fixed at any other
time so I can't see anything happening sooner.

 

[Paresh S]

Thanks Tony!!

I feel that finding an issue, reporting and fixing it is more important (and
not the channel)

Thanks for quicly looking into all the issues and reporting the valid issue
to MicroSoft

I just have one request- Could you (or somebody from the MS) notify me
afterthe issue is fixed?

~Paresh

 

[Tony Jollans]

Being a relatively minor issue I suspect that the best that can be hoped for
is a fix in the next version of Word - still a year or two away I would
think. Realistically I, and Microsoft, and maybe you, too, will have long
forgotten this exchange by then.

If I were you I would just be aware that the option has no effect with
wildcards, and check it out again when you get a new version in 20xx.

 

[Paresh S]

ok..it's fine then

~Paresh

Being a relatively minor issue I suspect that the best that can be hoped for
is a fix in the next version of Word - still a year or two away I would
think. Realistically I, and Microsoft, and maybe you, too, will have long
forgotten this exchange by then.

If I were you I would just be aware that the option has no effect with
wildcards, and check it out again when you get a new version in 20xx.