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Using Find and Replace
From NeoWiki
OpenOffice.org and thus NeoOffice use a somewhat convoluted Find-and-Replace syntax. This page will hopefully demystify some of the commonly-used commands.
- NeoOffice Help: Search for replacing; text or regular expressions; list of or regular expressions; searching (guide) in NeoOffice Help for more detailed info
- Trinity threads on the subject: [1], [2], [3]
- Iannz Find & Replace Macro: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/hillview/OOo/IannzFindReplace.sxw
Returns/Blank Lines
- Search and replace of formatting characters, such as returns (paragraph ends) and tabs can only be done by using the regular expression feature. You can't paste these characters into the search and replace fields.
- Check the "Regular Expressions" box in the Search dialog, then fill in the codes required. These are given in the online help, but the explanations are not very clear.
- ^$ as the search term will find and select for replacement empty paragraphs, but ^$^$ does not find adjacent empty paragraphs - it returns no matches.
- $ as the search term finds and selects for replacement all end-of-line characters, but any text$ finds and selects occurrences of any text at the end of lines, without selecting the end-of-line charter itself.
- There is no way to replace two returns; Iannz's Find & Replace Macro will do this.
- You cannot use ^ or $ in the replace field to insert paragraphs - it has to be \n
Tabs
- \t represents a tab character. This behaves in a sane manner, as \t\t is two tabs, etc, and it is the same code in both find and replace.
