Finding a single word via find/replace wildcards

[Paul B.]

Hi, I'm running Word '03 on WinXP sp3.

I'm trying to catch the word "wouldest" in a multiword selection and
convert it to "would". I've got the find/replace dialog open,
wildcards checked, all other options cleared, but this Find string:

(<*)[! ]dest>

is pulling in the entire selection up to and including the word
"wouldest". If I hit Next the selection recedes by one word at its
beginning. The way I see it, the [! ] should kill finding multiple
words, since the space is not allowed. Do I have that right? I must be
doing something wrong.

Any input would be appreciated.
p.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Sorry, you don't have it right. The [! ] in that expression means only
that the single character preceding "dest" must not be a space; but it
doesn't restrict any of the characters that come before that. The real
cause of your problem, though, is the asterisk. That will match as
many characters as possible, including spaces and even paragraph
marks.

For the task as stated, I don't quite understand why you're using
wildcards -- you should be able to search for the specific word
"wouldest" and replace it with "would". But if you do want to use
wildcards, I'll suggest either of these search terms:

[! ]@dest
[A-Za-z]@dest

The difference is mainly that the first one would match digits and
punctuation marks as well as letters.

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

 

[Paul]

I think it might help to clarify what it means to 'catch the word
"wouldest" in a multiword selection'. Selection means something very
specific in windows environments. Do you mean instead that you want
to match all instances of "wouldest" occuring within a specific
pattern of words? A few simple examples would help.

Sorry, you don't have it right. The [! ] in that expression means only
that the single character preceding "dest" must not be a space; but it
doesn't restrict any of the characters that come before that. The real
cause of your problem, though, is the asterisk. That will match as
many characters as possible, including spaces and even paragraph
marks.

For the task as stated, I don't quite understand why you're using
wildcards -- you should be able to search for the specific word
"wouldest" and replace it with "would". But if you do want to use
wildcards, I'll suggest either of these search terms:

[! ]@dest
[A-Za-z]@dest

The difference is mainly that the first one would match digits and
punctuation marks as well as letters.

Hi, I'm running Word '03 on WinXP sp3.

I'm trying to catch the word "wouldest" in a multiword selection and
convert it to "would". I've got the find/replace dialog open,
wildcards checked, all other options cleared, but this Find string:

(<*)[! ]dest>

is pulling in the entire selection up to and including the word
"wouldest". If I hit Next the selection recedes by one word at its
beginning. The way I see it, the [! ] should kill finding multiple
words, since the space is not allowed. Do I have that right? I must be
doing something wrong.

Any input would be appreciated.
p.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Given that there is no such word as 'wouldest' in the spelling dictionary, I
would have thought that the spell check could have taken care of this?
F7 -change all?

 

[Tony Jollans]

Spaces are allowed within the "*" bit. You are looking for the anything
starting at the beginning of a word (<*) followed by a single non-space
([! ]) followed by "dest" at the end of a word. You have found a whole
string of stuff followed by "l" (a non-space) followed by "dest".

I don't see why you can't just look for <wouldest>, but what you need to do
to the search string you have is make it look for a sequence of non-space
characters ... <[! ]@dest>

 

[Tony Jollans]

Ignore me! I saw the original post and replied without registering that Jay
had already given virtually the same answer.

--
Enjoy,
Tony

www.WordArticles.com

Spaces are allowed within the "*" bit. You are looking for the anything
starting at the beginning of a word (<*) followed by a single non-space
([! ]) followed by "dest" at the end of a word. You have found a whole
string of stuff followed by "l" (a non-space) followed by "dest".

I don't see why you can't just look for <wouldest>, but what you need to
do to the search string you have is make it look for a sequence of
non-space characters ... <[! ]@dest>

--
Enjoy,
Tony

www.WordArticles.com

Hi, I'm running Word '03 on WinXP sp3.

I'm trying to catch the word "wouldest" in a multiword selection and
convert it to "would". I've got the find/replace dialog open,
wildcards checked, all other options cleared, but this Find string:

(<*)[! ]dest>

is pulling in the entire selection up to and including the word
"wouldest". If I hit Next the selection recedes by one word at its
beginning. The way I see it, the [! ] should kill finding multiple
words, since the space is not allowed. Do I have that right? I must be
doing something wrong.

Any input would be appreciated.
p.

 

[Paul B.]

Thanks to everyone for the answer. That was a very clear explanation,
Jay. The function of the @ had escaped me. I have some Perl RegEx
experience, but Word's lingo frequently drives me batty.

Graham, the reason I'm trying to do this via Search is that I
occasionally want to convert KJV Bible verses to more modern usage, so
it's more than a question of the "wouldest" word, and I'm constructing
a macro to do it all (besides, I have a KJV dictionary installed, so
'wouldst' isn't flagged in spell check). I could have made that more
clear in my post. I'll probably doctor this up to only pick up "est"
word endings preceded by certain consonants, in order to avoid false
positives.

And Tony - sorry, but I refuse to ignore you!

Be well,
p.

Sorry, you don't have it right. The [! ] in that expression means only
that the single character preceding "dest" must not be a space; but it
doesn't restrict any of the characters that come before that. The real
cause of your problem, though, is the asterisk. That will match as
many characters as possible, including spaces and even paragraph
marks.

For the task as stated, I don't quite understand why you're using
wildcards -- you should be able to search for the specific word
"wouldest" and replace it with "would". But if you do want to use
wildcards, I'll suggest either of these search terms:

[! ]@dest
[A-Za-z]@dest

The difference is mainly that the first one would match digits and
punctuation marks as well as letters.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP        FAQ:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

Hi, I'm running Word '03 on WinXP sp3.

I'm trying to catch the word "wouldest" in a multiword selection and
convert it to "would". I've got the find/replace dialog open,
wildcards checked, all other options cleared, but this Find string:

(<*)[! ]dest>

is pulling in the entire selection up to and including the word
"wouldest". If I hit Next the selection recedes by one word at its
beginning. The way I see it, the [! ] should kill finding multiple
words, since the space is not allowed. Do I have that right? I must be
doing something wrong.

Any input would be appreciated.
p.

 

[Graham Mayor]

You could turn off your KJV dictionary and that would then allow such words
to be flagged as in error and give you the option to replace all with real
words. If you want to stick with searches, then
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm will explain the
structure

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>


Thanks to everyone for the answer. That was a very clear explanation,
Jay. The function of the @ had escaped me. I have some Perl RegEx
experience, but Word's lingo frequently drives me batty.

Graham, the reason I'm trying to do this via Search is that I
occasionally want to convert KJV Bible verses to more modern usage, so
it's more than a question of the "wouldest" word, and I'm constructing
a macro to do it all (besides, I have a KJV dictionary installed, so
'wouldst' isn't flagged in spell check). I could have made that more
clear in my post. I'll probably doctor this up to only pick up "est"
word endings preceded by certain consonants, in order to avoid false
positives.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Note that a "modern language KJV" has been published -- I don't know
exactly what it's called -- that smooths out the archaic grammatical
forms but retains the poetic diction and doesn't correct the mistaken
translations, so is there really a need to do this yourself?

Thanks to everyone for the answer. That was a very clear explanation,
Jay. The function of the @ had escaped me. I have some Perl RegEx
experience, but Word's lingo frequently drives me batty.

Graham, the reason I'm trying to do this via Search is that I
occasionally want to convert KJV Bible verses to more modern usage, so
it's more than a question of the "wouldest" word, and I'm constructing
a macro to do it all (besides, I have a KJV dictionary installed, so
'wouldst' isn't flagged in spell check). I could have made that more
clear in my post. I'll probably doctor this up to only pick up "est"
word endings preceded by certain consonants, in order to avoid false
positives.

And Tony - sorry, but I refuse to ignore you!

Be well,
p.

Sorry, you don't have it right. The [! ] in that expression means only
that the single character preceding "dest" must not be a space; but it
doesn't restrict any of the characters that come before that. The real
cause of your problem, though, is the asterisk. That will match as
many characters as possible, including spaces and even paragraph
marks.

For the task as stated, I don't quite understand why you're using
wildcards -- you should be able to search for the specific word
"wouldest" and replace it with "would". But if you do want to use
wildcards, I'll suggest either of these search terms:

[! ]@dest
[A-Za-z]@dest

The difference is mainly that the first one would match digits and
punctuation marks as well as letters.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP        FAQ:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

Hi, I'm running Word '03 on WinXP sp3.
I'm trying to catch the word "wouldest" in a multiword selection and
convert it to "would". I've got the find/replace dialog open,
wildcards checked, all other options cleared, but this Find string:
(<*)[! ]dest>
is pulling in the entire selection up to and including the word
"wouldest". If I hit Next the selection recedes by one word at its
beginning. The way I see it, the [! ] should kill finding multiple
words, since the space is not allowed. Do I have that right? I must be
doing something wrong.
Any input would be appreciated.

 

[Paul B.]

Peter: Yes, there are many updated KJV versions. I seldom use the KJV,
except that I have it electronically with embedded word definitions.
But sometimes I have an article in which the quotes are hard to read,
so I decided it would be worth it to make a converter.

Graham: Since I'm also converting "thee's and thou's and thy's",
there's much more to do. And toggling the KJV dictionary would be a
nuisance.

Paul: Sorry I missed your post first time through. Thanks for your
response.

p.

 

[Graham Mayor]

OK I give in on the dictionary

If you have a list of the words you want to change and what you want to
change them to, you could add them to a two column table. Put the word to
find in the left column and the word to replace in the right column. Save
the table as Changes.doc (the name is not important as long as you reflect
it and its path in the following macro and it will work fine with docx
formats). The macro will replace all the first words with the second words
in the current document.

Sub ReplaceFromTableList()
Dim oChanges As Document, oDoc As Document
Dim oTable As Table
Dim oRng As Range
Dim rFindText As Range, rReplacement As Range
Dim i As Long
Dim sFname As String
'Change the path to reflect your table document
sFname = "D:\My Documents\Test\Changes.doc"
Set oDoc = ActiveDocument
Set oChanges = Documents.Open(FileName:=sFname, Visible:=False)
Set oTable = oChanges.Tables(1)
For i = 1 To oTable.Rows.Count
Set oRng = oDoc.Range
Set rFindText = oTable.Cell(i, 1).Range
rFindText.End = rFindText.End - 1
Set rReplacement = oTable.Cell(i, 2).Range
rReplacement.End = rReplacement.End - 1
With oRng.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
Do While .Execute(findText:=rFindText, _
MatchWholeWord:=True, _
MatchWildcards:=False, _
Forward:=True, _
Wrap:=wdFindContinue) = True
oRng.Text = rReplacement
Loop
End With
Next i
oChanges.Close wdDoNotSaveChanges
End Sub
http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm

 

[Paul B.]

Wow, that's an amazing macro. I'm glad to see that such referencing is
possible. I'm frankly not sure which method would be better for me in
this case. This is more compact than the separate find/replace
routines - I think there are five of them - but I'd have to list words
separately rather than use wildcards. I'm going to give this some
thought. Is there a way to set oRng to the current Selection? IAC,
this is a keeper. Thanks.

p.