Find and replace, why doesn't \[*] work any more?

[Guest]

In my doc I have text with square brackets around it that I need to delete.
EG: [Q1]. To delete this in the past I would do a find and replace using the
wild card function \[*] . Now this is not working. It says it can’t find
any. I have even tried making the change on a doc that it worked on before.
What has changed and how do I adapted?

 

[Jay Freedman]

In my doc I have text with square brackets around it that I need to delete.
EG: [Q1]. To delete this in the past I would do a find and replace using the
wild card function \[*] . Now this is not working. It says it can’t find
any. I have even tried making the change on a doc that it worked on before.
What has changed and how do I adapted?

When you're using wildcards, square brackets in the Find expression
have a special meaning. To find actual brackets in the text, both
brackets in the expression have to be preceded by backslashes. The
expression should be

\[*\]

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Two things:

1. Enable Use wildcards.

2. Use \ before each of the [] characters: \[*\]

 

[Guest]

Jay - Thank you so much. Sometimes it's the simplest things!

In my doc I have text with square brackets around it that I need to delete.
EG: [Q1]. To delete this in the past I would do a find and replace using the
wild card function \[*] . Now this is not working. It says it can’t find
any. I have even tried making the change on a doc that it worked on before.
What has changed and how do I adapted?

When you're using wildcards, square brackets in the Find expression
have a special meaning. To find actual brackets in the text, both
brackets in the expression have to be preceded by backslashes. The
expression should be

\[*\]

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Thank you as well Herb! All is working well!

Two things:

1. Enable Use wildcards.

2. Use \ before each of the [] characters: \[*\]

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

In my doc I have text with square brackets around it that I need to
delete.
EG: [Q1]. To delete this in the past I would do a find and replace using
the
wild card function \[*] . Now this is not working. It says it can’t find
any. I have even tried making the change on a doc that it worked on
before.
What has changed and how do I adapted?