How do i find and replace words in parenthesis?

[Guest]

I play guitar and have several files with the chord names in parenthesis. Ex.
A (B)child arrived just the (D)other day... Using find and replace with
special characters, I need to find all letters and numbers enclosed in
parenthesis (including the parenthesis characters) and change the font color
to red in order to highlight the chords. Does anyone know the special
character string that will find all occurrances of text within parenthesis
(including the Parenthesis Marks) and replace with an alternate text color?

 

[Phil Rabichow]

Hi Bob:
1. Press Ctrl+H to bring up Find/Replace dialog box.
2. In the find box, type
\(*\)
3. click in the replace box, go to Format/Font & change it to red. Leave the
replace box blank. Under it, it will say Format: Font color: Red
4. Click "Use wildcards"
5. Click Replace all.

The "\" tells Word to treat an operator (like parenthses) as just a character.
Therefore, \( finds the opening paren, the "*" says to find everything after that
up to \), which is the closing paren.
--
Hope this helps.

Phil
To assist in maintaining the thread for others who are interested, please post
any follow-up question or reply in the newsgroup and not directly to me

 

[Guest]

you can use the Any Character special character in the Find What box
(enclosed in parentheses) and the Find What Text special character in the
Replace With box. You will need to do more than one search if some of the
parentheticals have more than one character. (One search for strings with one
character, one for strings with two characters, etc.)

Looks like this:
Find What box text: (^?)
Replace With box text: ^&
(this is for the one-character search. for the two-character search, use 2
Any Character characters in Find What)

make sense?

--Mick

 

[Guest]

oh yeah. Phil's way is better than the one I just posted

 

[Guest]

Exactly what I needed! Thanks

Hi Bob:
1. Press Ctrl+H to bring up Find/Replace dialog box.
2. In the find box, type
\(*\)
3. click in the replace box, go to Format/Font & change it to red. Leave the
replace box blank. Under it, it will say Format: Font color: Red
4. Click "Use wildcards"
5. Click Replace all.

The "\" tells Word to treat an operator (like parenthses) as just a character.
Therefore, \( finds the opening paren, the "*" says to find everything after that
up to \), which is the closing paren.
--
Hope this helps.

Phil
To assist in maintaining the thread for others who are interested, please post
any follow-up question or reply in the newsgroup and not directly to me

 

[Graham Mayor]

Only problem is that this will convert any bracketed text and not merely
your chord numbers.
Search instead for
\([a-zA-Z0-9]{1,}\)
Replace with
^& format font red

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site www.gmayor.com

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