Finding and replacing text and formatting

Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 2.x

Chapter 6: Getting Started with Writer

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• The Writer workspace
• Creating a new document
• Saving a document
• Working with text

• Cutting, copying, and pasting text
• Moving paragraphs quickly
• Finding and replacing text
• Inserting special characters
• Inserting dashes and non-breaking spaces
• Setting tab stops and indents
• Checking spelling
• Using AutoCorrect
• Using word completion
• Using AutoText
• Inserting notes

• Formatting text

• Using styles
• Formatting paragraphs
• Formatting characters
• Autoformatting
• Creating numbered or bulletted lists
• Hyphenating words

• Undoing and redoing changes
• Tracking changes to a document

• Recording changes
• Accepting or rejecting changes and comments

• Formatting pages

• Choosing a layout method
• Creating headers and footers
• Changing page margins

• Numbering pages

• Including the total number of pages
• Restarting page numbering
• Changing the format of page numbers

• Creating a table of contents
• Creating indexes and bibliographies
• Printing from Writer

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Writer has a Find and Replace feature that automates the process of searching for text inside a document.

In addition to finding and replacing words and phrases, you can:

• Use wildcards and regular expressions to fine-tune a search.
• Find and replace specific formatting.
• Find and replace paragraph styles.

See Chapter 3 in the Writer Guide for more information.

To display the Find & Replace dialog box, use the keyboard shortcut Control+F or select Edit > Find & Replace.

1. Type the text you want to find in the Search for box.
2. To replace the text with different text, type the new text in the Replace with box.
3. You can select various options, such as matching the case, matching whole words only, or doing a search for similar words. (See below for some other choices.)
4. When you have set up your search, click Find. To replace text, click Replace instead.

File:FindReplace1.png

The Find & Replace dialog.

If you click Find All, Writer selects all instances of the search text in the document. Similarly, if you click Replace All button, Writer will replace all matches.

Use Replace All with caution; otherwise, you may end up with some hilarious (and highly embarrassing) mistakes. A mistake with Replace All might require a manual, word-by-word search to fix.