Find & Replace Settings

The find and replace options change the behaviour of these operations.
These options are explained below.

Top two 'Find' options:

1. Neither are checked.

The preview example shows the result.
If the find phrase was 'cat', then without 'whole words only' checked, it will even find it in parts of words.
Also, without 'Match case' checked, it will match both upper and lower case letters.

2. 'Find whole words only' checked.

Now if the find phrase is a smaller part of a bigger word, it is ignored.

3. Match case of 'find' phrase checked.

Now the find phrase only matches when the case also matches.
So the find phrase 'cat' will not match 'Cat'.

*NOTE: 'Match case' ONLY looks at the FIRST letter found.

4. Both checked.

If both options are checked, then only whole words beginning with the same case as the find phrase will be found.

2. 'Select found text' option

This is really great if you want to apply formatting to multiple words / phrases in a document!

This option causes all text items found in the document to be selected.

No highlighting is applied to the found text in this case, as it will already be coloured light blue when it is selected.

NOTE: After the found text is selected, further find / replace commands will only apply to the selected text. Simply click anywhere on the document to remove the selection.

3. 'Highlight found text differently' option

This option causes individual 'find' phrases to be highlighted with a different colour. (See example below.) Up to 20 different highlight colours can be used in a single find operation.

This makes it a lot easier to find the individual phrases in your document!

NOTE: The highlight colour selected in the editor will not be used in this case.

Example: Finding: 'cat', 'mouse', 'fat' and 'child':

"Go ahead," said the mouse, "and if they serve you something good, just think of me. I would certainly welcome a drop of good red christening wine." But the cat went straight to the church and ate the top off the fat and then went strolling about the town and did not return home until evening.

"You must have had a good time," said the mouse. "What name did they give the child?"

"Top-Off," answered the cat.

"Top-Off? That's a strange name, one that I've not yet heard."

Soon afterward the cat took another longing, went to the mouse, and said, "I've been asked to serve as godfather once again. The child has a white ring around its body. I can't say no. You'll have to do me a favour and take care of the house by yourself today."

The mouse agreed, and the cat went and ate up half the fat. When she returned home, the mouse asked, "What name did this godchild receive?"

4. 'Replace' options...

(In these examples, the document text is: 'Catching a cat, Cat, or cats.'
The 'find' phrase is 'cat', as in the above examples, and the 'Find whole words only' option is checked.)

1. Adapt case of 'replace' phrase to target is NOT checked.

Then the 'replace' phrase simply replaces the found text unchanged.
(In the example, the word 'Dog', starting with a capital 'D', replaces both the word 'cat' and the word 'Cat'.)

2. Adapt case of 'replace' phrase to target checked.

Then the case of the first letter of the 'replace' phrase is changed to match the word it is replacing. This is very useful when some of the words replaced are at the beginning of a sentence.
(In the example, the word 'Dog' is changed to 'dog' when it replaces 'cat'. )

Using the 'Swap' feature...

When the 'Swap' box is checked, the 'find' and 'replace' phrases reverse.

The diagram below shows how 'swap' affects two simple find/replace phrases.

Note that any find phrases that are regular expressions are not swapped.
Also, there is no affect on find phrases that don't have corresponding replace phrases.

Have fun! 😀

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