Finding words near other words

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Guest

Is there a way to find instances of words near other words, or to do
Boolean-style searches, within a Word document?

For example, I want to find all instances of the word "hello" within 2 words
of "world". So, I would find "hello world", "hello happy world", "hello and
goodbye world."

I tried typing in Hello * World in the Find What... box, but that didn't work.

Any ideas? Thanks.
 
There isn't a built-in text retrieval/query language. I wrote to
(e-mail address removed) asking to add such a feature to Word (including, say,
"NEAR", Boolean operators such as "AND", "OR", "NOT"/"EXCEPT", and the
already existing "Sounds like" and "Match all word forms").

There seem to be only very expensive corporate solutions for this kind of
search like
http://www.isysusa.com/downloads/whitepapers/isyssdkwhitepaper.pdf

At least, I haven't seen a cheap or free add-in for this kind of query.

Regards,
Klaus
 
Some of the regular expression gurus might have better suggestions, but you
can use --

Hello[!^013]*world

to find all instances of "Hello ... world" within one paragraph. You need
'Use wildcards' checked, and the test is case sensitive.
 
Jezebel said:
Some of the regular expression gurus might have better suggestions, but you
can use --

Hello[!^013]*world

to find all instances of "Hello ... world" within one paragraph. You need
'Use wildcards' checked, and the test is case sensitive.
Click to expand...

Find what: Hello[!^13]@world
would work as advertised...
The * wildcard matches anything, so the match wouldn't be restricted to a
paragraph.

Regards,
Klaus
 
Klaus, try it!



Klaus Linke said:
Jezebel said:
Some of the regular expression gurus might have better suggestions, but you
can use --

Hello[!^013]*world

to find all instances of "Hello ... world" within one paragraph. You need
'Use wildcards' checked, and the test is case sensitive.
Click to expand...

Find what: Hello[!^13]@world
would work as advertised...
The * wildcard matches anything, so the match wouldn't be restricted to a
paragraph.

Regards,
Klaus
Click to expand...
 
Hello[!^013]*world
Klaus, try it!
Click to expand...

I did ;-)

Klaus


Hello, how are you?

this fear of being what they are:
dead.

at least they are not out on the street, they
are careful to stay indoors, those
pasty mad who sit alone before their tv sets,
their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter.

their ideal neighborhood
of parked cars
of little green lawns
of little homes
the little doors that open and close
as their relatives visit
throughout the holidays
the doors closing
behind the dying who die so slowly
behind the dead who are still alive
in your quiet average world
of winding streets
of agony
of confusion
of horror
of fear
of ignorance.

a dog standing behind a fence.

a man silent at the window.

Charles Bukowski (with small changes)

(you probably have to replace line breaks ^l with paragraph marks ^p first)
 
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