Getting rid of brackets and contents in Word 97 SR3?

[Guest]

I have a 240 page document full of characters inside brackets, like this [1]
or [59] etc. I want to delete all occurrences of these bracketed characters.
How do I do it?

 

[macropod]

Hi Kevin,

Try Find & Replace with '[\[0-9\]]' as the Find string and an empty replace string. You may need/want to clean up the left-over
double spaces after this operation.

Cheers

 

[macropod]

Oh, BTW, you need to choose the 'Use wildcards' option.

Cheers
--
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]
-------------------------

Hi Kevin,

Try Find & Replace with '[\[0-9\]]' as the Find string and an empty replace string. You may need/want to clean up the left-over
double spaces after this operation.

Cheers
--
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]
-------------------------

I have a 240 page document full of characters inside brackets, like this [1]
or [59] etc. I want to delete all occurrences of these bracketed characters.
How do I do it?

 

[Stefan Blom]

Click Edit | Replace. Click the More button and check the "Use
wildcards" option.

Find what: \[[0-9]@\]

Replace with: <leave blank>

Click Replace All.

If the bracketed numbers are preceded and followed by a space, you will
also have to find two spaces and replace them with one space.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message
news:[email protected]...

 

[Guest]

Hi Kevin,

Just as I was going to write this, Stefan Bloom wrote another way of doing
it. Both our ways make sure that any number (no matter how many digits) will
be deleted.

Another additional point about deleting the double spaces, why not do it in
one go? That is, put a space on either side of the expression below (ie:
space\[[0-9]{1,}\]space) and put a single space in the replace field.

Find what: _\[[0-9]{1,}\]_
Replace: _

*note that the space is shown by _

If the bracketed numbers may appear before a full stop, this might not work,
and it is best to use Stefan's two step approach!

Cheers,

Suranthe

 

[Guest]

That got rid of a few instances, but not all. Some look like this: [16>]
with non-numeric characters inside the brackets. I need to get rid of every
bracketed occurrence, no matter what is inside the brackets. Hope that helps.

 

[Stefan Blom]

In my previous message, change the "Find what" to: \[*\]
That will find anything surrounded by [].

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

That got rid of a few instances, but not all. Some look like this: [16>]
with non-numeric characters inside the brackets. I need to get rid of every
bracketed occurrence, no matter what is inside the brackets. Hope

that helps.

 

[Guest]

It worked! Thank you all for your help. That saved me a lot of manual work.
Have a great day!

In my previous message, change the "Find what" to: \[*\]
That will find anything surrounded by [].

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

That got rid of a few instances, but not all. Some look like this: [16>]
with non-numeric characters inside the brackets. I need to get rid of every
bracketed occurrence, no matter what is inside the brackets. Hope

that helps.

 

[Stefan Blom]

You are welcome, and thank you for the feedback.

FWIW, if you want to learn more about wildcard searches, see the article
at http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

It worked! Thank you all for your help. That saved me a lot of manual work.
Have a great day!

In my previous message, change the "Find what" to: \[*\]
That will find anything surrounded by [].

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

That got rid of a few instances, but not all. Some look like

this:
[16>]

with non-numeric characters inside the brackets. I need to get

rid of
every

bracketed occurrence, no matter what is inside the brackets. Hope

that helps.