Replacing with Special Characters (2003)

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Hello,

Rand into something the other day. I was creating some documentation, and using a keystroke font to show keys. You know, instead of writing CRTL + C I was putting characters that looked like keys. Well, the character for the F6 key in this particular font is the caret symbol (^). When I tried to do a replace, searching for F6 and replacing with ^, word informed me that I couldn’t use the caret symbol in the replace line because “^ is not a valid special character for the Replace With box.”

I eventually did it manually, but is there a solution to this? And what other characters can’t you use when doing global replaces?

Thanks.

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Hi Bob

The option to find/replace special characters is accessed by selecting the more button on the find/replace dialog. You can then click on the special button to list the special characters to find or replace including the caret character. The attachment show the options available for the “replace with” box.

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Hi Bob

The option to find/replace special characters is accessed by selecting the more button on the find/replace dialog. You can then click on the special button to list the special characters to find or replace including the caret character. The attachment show the options available for the “replace with” box.

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You didn’t say, but the trick in this case is the use ^^ (two carets in a row) to replace something with a caret. If the Use wildcards checkbox is checked, some additional characters become illegal. It is best to use the help system to ferret those out. That and a lot of trial and error.

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In old versions, the “Special” popup listed many of the shortcuts, so it was easy to learn them.

I wrote to MSWish, asking them to display all the shortcuts (for normal and wildcard searches).
They listened… and removed them all

Klaus

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In old versions, the “Special” popup listed many of the shortcuts, so it was easy to learn them.

I wrote to MSWish, asking them to display all the shortcuts (for normal and wildcard searches).
They listened… and removed them all

Klaus

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You didn’t say, but the trick in this case is the use ^^ (two carets in a row) to replace something with a caret. If the Use wildcards checkbox is checked, some additional characters become illegal. It is best to use the help system to ferret those out. That and a lot of trial and error.

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(Edited by Phil Rabichow on 17-Nov-04 14:42. to add information that was left out. A big thanks to Klaus Linke for these additions.)

Bob:
Here is a list of special characters that you can use with Find/Replace, depending upon whether Use Wildcards is selected.

Special Characters You Can Find & Replace w/o Use Wildcards
You can search for and replace the following special characters by entering them in the Find What and Replace With boxes. You can also insert many of these characters by clicking the Special button, and then selecting the operator you want.

To find or replace special characters using an EditFind or EditReplace instruction, specify the following codes for the .Find and .Replace arguments. Press SHIFT+6 for the ^ symbol and make sure to use lowercase letters.

characters	string matches
^1	Picture (Except pictures with Float Over Text property, Word 98 Macintosh Edition)
^2	Auto-referenced footnotes
^5	Comment mark
^9	Tab
^11	New line
^12	Page OR section break
^13	Carriage return
^14	Column break
^19	Opening field brace (when the field braces are visible)
^21	Closing field brace (when the field braces are visible)
^?	Word 6.x and later: Any single character (not valid in the Replace box)
^-	Optional hyphen
^~	Non-breaking hyphen
^^	Caret character
^#	Any digit (Word 6.x and later)
^$	Any letter (Word 6.x and later)
^&	Contents of Find What box (Replace box only) (Word 6.x and later)
^+	Em Dash (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^=	En Dash (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^u8195	Em Space Unicode character value search (not valid in the Replace box)
^u8194	En Space Unicode character value search (not valid in the Replace box)
^a	Comment (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x – Word 7.0)
^b	Section Break (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^c	Replace with Clipboard contents (Replace box only)
^d	Field(Word 6.x and later)
^e	Endnote Mark (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^f	Footnote Mark (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^g	Graphic(Word 6.x and later)
^l	New line
^m	Manual Page Break (Word 6.x and later)
^n	Column break (Word 6.x and later)
^t	Tab
^p	Paragraph mark
^s	Non-breaking space
^w	White space (space, non-breaking space, tab; not valid in the Replace box)
^nnn	Where “n” is an ASCII character number; you can use this (& the next one) to Find & delete square boxes like this
^0nnn	Same as above, but uses ANSI characters (ALT+nnn PC only)
^unnnn	Word 97 Unicode character search where “n” is a decimal number corresponding to the Unicode character value.

NOTE: To search for a specific field, such as an XE (Index Entry) field, use the following
syntax:

^19

When you work with either the Search or Replace command, you can use the CTRL key to search or replace the following:

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X to copy/paste/cut, and Ctrl+Z to undo
Ctrl+1 = line spacing: Single
Ctrl+5 = line spacing: 1.5 lines
Ctrl+2 = line spacing: Double
Ctrl+Shift+W = Word underline
Ctrl+Shift+D = Double underline
Ctrl+Shift+A = All caps
Ctrl+Shift+K = Small caps/Not small caps
Ctrl+Shift+H = Hidden/Not Hidden
Ctrl+Spacebar removes character formatting (just like outside the Find/Replace box). In other words, if you’re searching for Body Text style Bold, you can remove all formatting by pressing Alt+t (since it’s a hotkey). You can remove just the bold attribute by pressing Ctrl+Spacebar.
Ctrl+Q removes paragraph-level formatting selectively.

Ctrl+B = Bold/Not Bold
Ctrl+U = Underline
Ctrl+I = Italic
Ctrl+Plus = Subscript
Shift+Ctrl+Plus = Superscript
Ctrl+L = Left-Aligned Text
Ctrl+R = Right-Aligned Text
Ctrl+E = Centered Text
Ctrl+J = Justified (All Text)
Ctrl+N = New (Finds text added with Tracked Changes On; stopped working in Word 2002/2003)

Notes:
If you omit the optional hyphen code, Word finds all matching text, including text with optional hyphens. If you include the optional hyphen code, Word finds only words with optional hyphens in the same position. For example, if you specify .Find = “type^-writer” Word finds “type-writer”, but not “typewriter”. You cannot search for hyphens that Word inserted automatically with the Hyphenation command (Tools menu).

White space includes any number and combination of normal and nonbreaking spaces, tab characters, and paragraph marks.

Special Characters That Can’t Be Used With Use Wildcards
If you select Use Wildcards in the Find or Replace dialog box, certain special characters cannot be used in the Find What text box:

When Use Wildcards is selected, Word uses an entirely different search engine. This alternative search engine is not designed to search for the special characters listed below.

To find the characters listed above when you have Use Wildcards selected, use the following substitutes in the Find What box:

char	sub	meaning
^p	^13	Paragraph mark
^e	^2	Auto-numbered endnote reference mark (see Note 1)
^d		Field (see Note 2)
^f	^2	Auto-numbered footnote reference mark
^b	^12	Section break or page break (see Note 3)
^w	sp{1,}	White space=any combination of spaces &/or tabs (see Note 4)

1. When using these substitutes, it is not possible to differentiate between endnote and footnote reference marks.
2. There is no equivalent substitute for ^d (Field).
3. When using ^12 to search for section breaks, page breaks will also be found by this pattern. Thus, ^12 is a limited substitute for ^b
4. For the substitute of ^w (white space), “” means that a space character should precede the “{1,}”. Do not type out “” in the Find What text box.
5. The substitutes should be used in the find box only DO NOT use them in the replace box.

Note that the workaround for endnotes and footnotes is the same (^e & ^f become ^2). This means that you cannot differentiate between these characters when wildcard searching (pattern matching). In addition, you cannot search for a field (^d) when using wildcard searching. Searching for white space (^w) is also a little different. You must type a space (press the space bar) and then enter the pattern {1,}. This causes Word to search for one or more spaces. This is not identical because white space includes tabs.

Cheers,

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Fabulous, as always. An invaluable chart. Thanks Phil and Klaus.

Van.

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Fabulous, as always. An invaluable chart. Thanks Phil and Klaus.

Van.

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I’m having trouble with a macro to search and replace hard returns. However, it works in just about all docs except for one of mine. The idea is to search for a space followed by a hard return and replace it with just the hard return. Here’s the code I’ve been using.

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = ” ^p”
.Replacement.Text = “^p”
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.Execute
Wend

I’ve attached a doc that makes the macro go into an endless loop. At the end of

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I don’t see an attachment

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Shoot, I did it again–I spelled checked after posting the attachment! Anyway, here it is.

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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You can replace ^w^p with ^p (^w being the placeholder for whitespace).
Word will refuse to replace paragraph marks right before a table, which leads to your endless loop.
If you need to fix that, you’d need to remove the space by some other means than a replacement, say find ” ^p” and then delete the first character in the selection: Selection.Characters(1).Delete.

  With Selection.Find
    .Text = " ^p"
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .MatchWildcards = False
  End With
  While Selection.Find.Execute
    Selection.Characters(1).Delete
  Wend

Klaus

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Klaus,

Thanks for the suggestion. Your code works for almost all of the ” ^p” pairings, especially the one before a table, but it usually leaves a few in the document, like those within the table itself. If I re-run the macro, it catches the rest of them. I’m trying to avoid re-running the macro. I used to do this by hand and search and replace, and I’d have to run the replace several times to get them all. In my original code, is there anyway to determine if the macro gets in an endless loop and break it? I don’t think there’s a way to search for a space followed by a hard return followed by a table, is there? BTW, are there other things in Word that could follow a ^p that Word won’t replace, like line returns instead of hard returns followed by a table, or hard returns followed by something else, maybe a text box or something? My macro worked great on the first few files I tried it on, but then it hit this snage with the table in the file I uploaded (finally this morning).

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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Hi Rich,

Could you post a table sample where you have to run the code twice?

Whitespace at the end of table cells would need to be handled separately: ^p won’t find the end-of-cell-markers

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OK, let me try the file again. It went to 103k with all my messing, so I’ve edited it back down to 80k, so here it is.

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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Don’t have too much time right now to look at it… But my guess is that the problem is story ranges.

You have some trailing whitespace in headers, footers, footnotes…
VBA always only searches the story range it’s currently in, and probably the macro gets hung in some footer or somewhere, and fails to remove the rest of the trailing spaces.

This article should help get around that problem.

So you only need to run through each story range once, you could go to the start of the story range first. And then, move the Selection to the start of the trailing whitespace after each match:

  Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
  Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
  With Selection.Find
    .Text = " ^p"
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .MatchWildcards = False
  End With
  While Selection.Find.Execute
    Selection.Characters(1).Delete
    Selection.MoveStartWhile Cset:=" ", Count:=wdBackward
    Selection.Collapse (wdCollapseStart)
  Wend

That macro should already fix the main document… For the rest, see the info in the FAQ article.

Klaus

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Thanks for the new code. I know I have a problem with headers, etc., but I was ignoring those for now. I’ve seen the strings on working with all stories, and I’ve actually used some of that code in other macros. I wanted to make sure the code worked in the body first. I’ll try your code later today and let you know how it works out.

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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Your new code works great. Why do you include Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory? Does that move the cursor to the top or just select the entire current Story? I do still have issues in headers, etc., but I’ll work on those. Also, is there a code to search for the end of row marker in a table? I didn’t see it in the long list of codes to search for in Phil’s posting.

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory puts the insertion point at the very start of the document.

I don’t think there is a way to use Find to locate an end-of-row marker, since it is the same as the end-of-cell marker.

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> Why do you include Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory?

To be frank, I really don’t quite understand where Word will search if you use Selection.Find.
According to theory (as I understand it), it should only search in the main document, and stop if it doesn’t find any more text matching the “Find what” text (using .Wrap=wdFindContinue as in my macro).
But as you see, it doesn’t work that way, and Word goes off to search/replace in some headers, footers, footnotes, …

So to get some control, I start at the top of the document (that’s where the line jumps to), and then replace downward, making sure not to miss anything.
If the end of the story range is reached, at least everything in that (main) story range has been properly replaced.

In other macros of mine, I tried to do the replacements “properly”, looping the story ranges using myRange.Find.
But with .Wrap set to wdFindContinue, Word still in some story ranges goes off to the next story range when the end of the range is reached, instead of continuing the search at the start of the range.

I’m pretty sure there’s a nasty bug there (at least in Word2003), but never had the time to investigate. I’ve seen others running into this issue, too.

End-of-cell- and end-of-row-markers can’t be found, either with or without wildcards.
It’s a nuisance: One has to loop all cells in all tables, and look for whitespace at the end of the cell’s text.

Klaus

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Thanks for the insight. That’s too bad about end of cell and end of row markers. I was afraid you were going to say they couldn’t be “found”, though, cause they weren’t listed in Phil’s table. Oh well, I’m mainly concerned about extra spaces outside of tables for the most part, but if it gets to be a big problem, I’ll try to get ambitious and see what I can do to find and replace those leftover spaces.

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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Klaus,

I’ve been using your code since you sent the message in August 05. However, within the last few days, it hasn’t been working properly. I suspect that some setting got flipped in Word 2000, but I can’t figure out which one. This part of your code causes an infinite loop if it finds a space followed by a ^P code in my docs:

While Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.Characters(1).Delete
Selection.MoveStartWhile Cset:=” “, Count:=wdBackward
Selection.Collapse (wdCollapseStart)
Wend

Any idea what might be causing this? I could use this alternative code that seems to work, but it had trouble if there was a space ^P after a table, and your code didn’t have that problem.

‘ Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
‘ Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
‘ Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
‘ With Selection.Find
‘ .Text = ” ^p”
‘ .Replacement.Text = “^p”
‘ .Forward = True
‘ .Wrap = wdFindContinue
‘ .Format = False
‘ .MatchWholeWord = False
‘ .MatchWildcards = False
‘ End With
‘ Selection.Find.Execute
‘ While Selection.Find.Found
‘ Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
‘ Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
‘ Selection.Find.Execute
‘ Wend

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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Hard to tell, maybe you could post a sample doc?
I could imagine it’s “Track changes”: If that is turned on, the deletion might mot actually happen (Word would just mark the space for deletion without actually deleting it).
And so you might find the space again and again.
Or it might be some kind of document protection that keeps the deletion from happening.
Either case you could probably catch in your macro, and give a warning to the user.

Klaus

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Thanks for the reply. It’s not track changes cause the first thing the macro does is turn off track changes. I’ve attached the macro code in a .DOC file in case you get a chance to look at it. I’ll attach a sample doc in another reply. Thanks for the help.

-Rich

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Here is the sample doc. The macro goes into an infinite loop on the space ^P at the end of section 8 in the attached doc.

Thx.

-Rich Belthoff

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The instruction

Selection.Characters(1).Delete

doesn’t work. Try this instead:

Selection.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseStart
Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

Remark: I intensely resent code that changes my personal settings – in this case the AutoCorrect and AutoFormat As You Type settings. The changes are not restricted to the current document!

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Thanks for the code. I’ll try it.

Sorry if I sent offending code in my example, but I’m the only one in my office that ever uses macros so I set them up for my personal preferences. If there is some code on WOPR that’ll restrict changes to the current doc, please let me know where it is and I’ll implement it.

-Rich.

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If the code is just meant for yourself, it’s OK. My remark was meant for if your code were to be used by others.

In general, code used to manipulate a document shouldn’t need to include code that changes application-wide settings, such as AutoCorrect and AutoFormatAsYouType settings. In the rare cases where it is necessary, you should store the current settings in one or more variables, and restore them at the end of your code.

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… which is very difficult in practice, though, because the options are different in each version, and there is no easy way (as far as I know) to back them all up.
(I have complained about this to Microsoft in the past)

Klaus

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Strange, your macro works well on your sample doc for me (Word 2003). There is an empty bookmark “QuickMark” between the space and the paragraph mark… Perhaps that messes things up in your version.

Klaus

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Is there a Find special character for the table end-of-cell marker? (In US English, Word displays it as ASCII Decimal 15 ☼, the shift-in character.) I have tried ^p, ^v, ^t, ^l, & ^n to no avail. For spacing and presentation reasons, I’m looking to eliminate the spaces which trail the numbers pasted from an Excel currency formatted range, such as in this example (using ASCII 250 to indicate the spaces):

·$······36.98·☼	·$······44.29·☼
·$······36.13·☼	·$······42.79·☼

The target tables are much larger than the example and I need to do this often. Point me to a post if one exists, macros are fine.

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Hi John:
No. There isn’t a special character to search for an end of cell marker. However, you can select your table, & using wildcards:
Find: ([0-9]) {1,}
Replace with: 1

I’m assuming that you’re just trying to replace spaces just before the end of cell marker, & not the ones after the $ sign. (That can be done also, if you want…or you could replace those spaces with a tab).

Hope this helps,

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Thanks, Phil.

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(Edited by Phil Rabichow on 17-Nov-04 14:42. to add information that was left out. A big thanks to Klaus Linke for these additions.)

Bob:
Here is a list of special characters that you can use with Find/Replace, depending upon whether Use Wildcards is selected.

Special Characters You Can Find & Replace w/o Use Wildcards
You can search for and replace the following special characters by entering them in the Find What and Replace With boxes. You can also insert many of these characters by clicking the Special button, and then selecting the operator you want.

To find or replace special characters using an EditFind or EditReplace instruction, specify the following codes for the .Find and .Replace arguments. Press SHIFT+6 for the ^ symbol and make sure to use lowercase letters.

characters	string matches
^1	Picture (Except pictures with Float Over Text property, Word 98 Macintosh Edition)
^2	Auto-referenced footnotes
^5	Comment mark
^9	Tab
^11	New line
^12	Page OR section break
^13	Carriage return
^14	Column break
^19	Opening field brace (when the field braces are visible)
^21	Closing field brace (when the field braces are visible)
^?	Word 6.x and later: Any single character (not valid in the Replace box)
^-	Optional hyphen
^~	Non-breaking hyphen
^^	Caret character
^#	Any digit (Word 6.x and later)
^$	Any letter (Word 6.x and later)
^&	Contents of Find What box (Replace box only) (Word 6.x and later)
^+	Em Dash (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^=	En Dash (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^u8195	Em Space Unicode character value search (not valid in the Replace box)
^u8194	En Space Unicode character value search (not valid in the Replace box)
^a	Comment (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x – Word 7.0)
^b	Section Break (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^c	Replace with Clipboard contents (Replace box only)
^d	Field(Word 6.x and later)
^e	Endnote Mark (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^f	Footnote Mark (not valid in the Replace box) (Word 6.x and later)
^g	Graphic(Word 6.x and later)
^l	New line
^m	Manual Page Break (Word 6.x and later)
^n	Column break (Word 6.x and later)
^t	Tab
^p	Paragraph mark
^s	Non-breaking space
^w	White space (space, non-breaking space, tab; not valid in the Replace box)
^nnn	Where “n” is an ASCII character number; you can use this (& the next one) to Find & delete square boxes like this
^0nnn	Same as above, but uses ANSI characters (ALT+nnn PC only)
^unnnn	Word 97 Unicode character search where “n” is a decimal number corresponding to the Unicode character value.

NOTE: To search for a specific field, such as an XE (Index Entry) field, use the following
syntax:

^19

When you work with either the Search or Replace command, you can use the CTRL key to search or replace the following:

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X to copy/paste/cut, and Ctrl+Z to undo
Ctrl+1 = line spacing: Single
Ctrl+5 = line spacing: 1.5 lines
Ctrl+2 = line spacing: Double
Ctrl+Shift+W = Word underline
Ctrl+Shift+D = Double underline
Ctrl+Shift+A = All caps
Ctrl+Shift+K = Small caps/Not small caps
Ctrl+Shift+H = Hidden/Not Hidden
Ctrl+Spacebar removes character formatting (just like outside the Find/Replace box). In other words, if you’re searching for Body Text style Bold, you can remove all formatting by pressing Alt+t (since it’s a hotkey). You can remove just the bold attribute by pressing Ctrl+Spacebar.
Ctrl+Q removes paragraph-level formatting selectively.

Ctrl+B = Bold/Not Bold
Ctrl+U = Underline
Ctrl+I = Italic
Ctrl+Plus = Subscript
Shift+Ctrl+Plus = Superscript
Ctrl+L = Left-Aligned Text
Ctrl+R = Right-Aligned Text
Ctrl+E = Centered Text
Ctrl+J = Justified (All Text)
Ctrl+N = New (Finds text added with Tracked Changes On; stopped working in Word 2002/2003)

Notes:
If you omit the optional hyphen code, Word finds all matching text, including text with optional hyphens. If you include the optional hyphen code, Word finds only words with optional hyphens in the same position. For example, if you specify .Find = “type^-writer” Word finds “type-writer”, but not “typewriter”. You cannot search for hyphens that Word inserted automatically with the Hyphenation command (Tools menu).

White space includes any number and combination of normal and nonbreaking spaces, tab characters, and paragraph marks.

Special Characters That Can’t Be Used With Use Wildcards
If you select Use Wildcards in the Find or Replace dialog box, certain special characters cannot be used in the Find What text box:

When Use Wildcards is selected, Word uses an entirely different search engine. This alternative search engine is not designed to search for the special characters listed below.

To find the characters listed above when you have Use Wildcards selected, use the following substitutes in the Find What box:

char	sub	meaning
^p	^13	Paragraph mark
^e	^2	Auto-numbered endnote reference mark (see Note 1)
^d		Field (see Note 2)
^f	^2	Auto-numbered footnote reference mark
^b	^12	Section break or page break (see Note 3)
^w	sp{1,}	White space=any combination of spaces &/or tabs (see Note 4)

1. When using these substitutes, it is not possible to differentiate between endnote and footnote reference marks.
2. There is no equivalent substitute for ^d (Field).
3. When using ^12 to search for section breaks, page breaks will also be found by this pattern. Thus, ^12 is a limited substitute for ^b
4. For the substitute of ^w (white space), “” means that a space character should precede the “{1,}”. Do not type out “” in the Find What text box.
5. The substitutes should be used in the find box only DO NOT use them in the replace box.

Note that the workaround for endnotes and footnotes is the same (^e & ^f become ^2). This means that you cannot differentiate between these characters when wildcard searching (pattern matching). In addition, you cannot search for a field (^d) when using wildcard searching. Searching for white space (^w) is also a little different. You must type a space (press the space bar) and then enter the pattern {1,}. This causes Word to search for one or more spaces. This is not identical because white space includes tabs.

Cheers,

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