Find and Replace

[Island Girl]

Suppose I have a 90 page document crammed full of the following number
patterns: 11R1962-72. I need to put these numbers in parentheses wherever
they appear in the document. You've taught me so far how to do that
successfully--and I thank you!

But some of the numbers have a period after the R (i.e., 11R.1962-72). How
do I find either of these patterns in one find-and-replace action?

I guess the simplest thing would be to find and remove the period, but
that's too easy!

Thanks more than I can say. This group offers the very best education in
Word that I've ever come across. And I thank you!

 

[Tony Jollans]

Word does not have a code for (zero or more) or (zero or one) occurrences of
a character so you have to work round this a little. What pattern are you
using at the moment?

If you look for (up to R) (dot or digit) (3 or 4 digits) (hyphen and on) you
should find your numbers with the dot, and those without, but also any with
a dot and only three digits - if this is problematic, there's probably
another way if you give a bit more detail of the strings (or a pointer to
earlier threads)

 

[Island Girl]

Thanks again, Tony, for all of your great help. I hope it will one day be
possible to use "0 or more" occurrences of a character. Until then, I'll get
by with a little help from you and your group!