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Replace using wildcards

Anonymous
2015-06-19T16:04:06+00:00

I have a large file which contains a good deal of text between quotation marks ("").

I want to italicise all of the text within quotation marks, throughout the document, but not the quotation marks themselves.

Can I do this with 'Replace' using a wildcard to select the text?

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Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2015-06-20T14:09:09+00:00

Use

Find What: ["^034"][!"^034"]{1,}["^034"]

Replace With Italic Font Format: \n

and then

Find What: (["^034"])

and then remove the Italic font format and replace with: \n

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-06-20T14:18:10+00:00

    Some progress...

    The Find box no longer generates an error but \n in the Replace box causes WORD to complain that "The Replace With text contains a group number which is out of range."

    ???

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-06-20T12:43:10+00:00

    Thanks for the suggestion Paul, but I am afraid that you are assuming a competence that I clearly do not have...

    How do I specify in the Find box that I want everything from the opening quotation mark to the closing one, and (I can select the italic font) but how do you specify in the Relace box that you want whatever was entered in the Find box?

    You patience is appreciated.

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  3. Paul Edstein 82,861 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-06-20T00:29:10+00:00

    I want to italicise all of the text within quotation marks, throughout the document, but not the quotation marks themselves.

    Can I do this with 'Replace' using a wildcard to select the text?

    No. A Find/Replace acts on the entire found text. You could, however, use two Find/Replace operations - one to italicize the quoted string (and quote characters(, the other to remove the italics from the quote characters.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-06-19T18:26:52+00:00

    This is because the curly quote marks got mangled by the forum parser.

    Try the following Find/Replace with "Use wildcards" ON. To enter curly quote marks in the Find What or Replace With box, you have to copy each from the document window through Ctrl+C, then paste them into the Find What or Replace With box with Ctrl+V.

    A curly LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK is inserted into the document window through "Alt+X, 8220".

    A curly RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK is inserted into the document window through "Alt+X, 8221".

    Unfortunately, Word (2007) cannot search for Unicode numbers when "Use wildcards" is ON. And the "Alt+X" method does not work well within the Find What box. You need to copy/paste the curly quote marks from the document window.

    Find What: "^034"["^034"]

    Replace With Italic Font Format: "\1"

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