Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 2997
Allow search and replace of character styles in "Find and Replace"
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:41:21 UTC
It is impossible to search and replace character styles using the "Find and Replace" dialog. I.e. whereas it is possible to replace, say, all "italic"-formatted text with "bold"-formatted, it is impossible to replace all "Emphasis"-style-formatted text to "Strong Emphasis" ("Search for styles" checkbox works only with paragraph styles). It is very important to have possibility to find raw formatting and replace it with style (e.g. replace all "italic" with "Ephasis"). This feature is crucial to reformatting raw-formatted documents (without styles) into "civilized" shape. Moreover, it would be great to have possibility finding _any_ entity (text or/and formatting) replace it with a style. E.g. "Find 'hello' and replace it with Emphasis style" would effectively mean "find 'hello' and apply Emphasis style". Again, for now it is possible only for raw formatting, not for styles. MS Word has all these features beginning from version 6.0 for DOS.
Reassigned to Christian.
I would also appreciate the ability to find & replace also nonstandard characters like line break, page break, long & short dash etc.
Reassigned to Bettina.
This is certainly possible in 644_m4. I just tried. But the wildcard search is <em>still<em> missing. In fact I was looking fo rthat when I stumbled on this bug report.
This issue has been marked as RESOLVED and FIXED, but no Target Milestone has been set. Can one be set for this issue?
reopen. You can search for the formatting of the character style, not for the style itself.racter styles from the "Find and Replace" dialog Also you cannot assign a character style using find and replace (You can use "Find All" and then applying the style as a workaround).
allow search for character styles (the same way it is possible for paragraph styles already).
*** Issue 11048 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 19923 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
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*** Issue 47057 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I would appreciate the ability to search for the combination of string, format, character style and paragraph style (or exclusion of some format, style...), and replace by another combination, for examples: + searching all "biblio" paragraph-styled new line characters, to delete them (or to replace them with ". "), + applying to all my "_author" character-styled, not "biblio" paragraph-styled characters the "_author in txt" character style, + replacing all strings consisting of a newline character followed by a "biblio" paragraph-styled, "_author" character-styled word, with the same string where the word would have been applied my "_author 1st" character style, + search for "biblio" paragraph styled paragraphs and cancel all raw formatting in them, + replacing any english language formatted dot between two figures by a french (or russian) formatted comma, or vice-versa, + replacing any english language formatted dot between a non-figure and a figure by a french language formatted "0,". To my mind, a simple user interface for this should be the ability to enter any string (allowing for wild and special characters) in "search for" and "replace with" fields, and to apply to such a string there any format and/or style. When the text in automatically entered because it was selected when "Find & replace" was called, "search formatted string", "search character-styled string", "search paragraph-styled string" options should be proposed. Since many people don't know wild characters and may want to look for stars etc., the ability of using wild characters should be an option available only in "More options". An "inherit" value for any attribute, and a global "inherit format" option should be available (specially for the "replace with" string), but this goes beyond the "Find & replace" fonctionality. Alternatively to the choice of any attribute value or style, a multiple choice list of attribute values or styles to be excluded should be proposed to the user formatting his string to search for. So the interface for fomatting text in this field should be slightly different from the one in the document text (or in the "Replace with" field). These supplementary options (excluding patterns) could appear in a "More options" part of the dialog.
*** Issue 48162 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Find & Replace (Search) should work for all types of Styles including Character, Page and Numbering. It is too hard to work with macros for normal user and working with Styles it's not for pros.
*** Issue 63669 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
If you Search for 'Format'-ted text (e.g., 'small capitals') you cannot Replace with a style. This seems to defeat the whole purpose (or at least a large part of it) of Search & Replace.
*** Issue 87306 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I'm a freelance writer. I frequently work with documents in the range of 15,000 to 35,000 words. Just as a programmer is expected to include #comments in his code, so too I am expected to interject frequent directions to the editors and production staff who evaluate and print my work. However, just as #comments don't actually do anything in code, my comments -- called "House Notes" -- don't count toward my word count, so it is essential that we're able to search and select all text formatted in "House Note" style to measure to current actual word count of the document. (Some people prefer to delete the house notes, count words, and Ctrl-Z undo; others prefer to count the House Notes, use a calculator to subtract them from the total word count. The result is the same.) In Microsoft Word, this is easy -- in the Search and Replace dialog box, select Format, Style, and then the style you want to search for. This works for both Paragraph and Character styles equally well. In OpenOffice.org, on the other hand, this simply is not possible. The OOo search function does not recognize that Character Styles are styles at all, making it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) to ascertain the actual word count of our documents. This defect is significant enough that it will deter a majority of the writers who work for this publishing company from permanently switching to OpenOffice.org. It probably affects thousands of other people as well who need to be able to search for character styles.
this issue should be marked with a Target milestone of OOo 3.x (as per duplicate issue 87306). it should also be marked with a Keyword of ms_interoperability, as per duplicate issue 87306.
This issue should be marked as a DEFECT, not an enhancement. Microsoft Word is the clear industry standard in word processing software, and OOo's failure to include this feature is a DEFECT.
Could a target milestone please be set for this issue? This is still a problem in 3.0, and given that the workaround now fails (see bug 96217) there is now no way to search for character-styled text. This is a major problem!
We should also use ability to search/apply paragraph styles for replacement text.
This issue's title shall be retargetted to "Allow search and replace of any category of styles in "Find and Replace" (are all these style categories managed in a different way ? When using them, it doesn't seem so, therefore why is there a difference in the F&R dialog ?)