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Finding and replacing characters using wildcards
Have you ever had to make a large number of repetitive changes to a document by hand?For example, have you ever had to find and remove duplicate rows from a large table, or transpose a list of names (change them from "Colin Wilcox" to "Wilcox, Colin")? Thattype of repetitive find-and-replace work gets old in a big hurry, doesn't it?You can automate many of those find-and-replace tasks. Microsoft Word provides a set of wildcard characters that you can use to build
regular expressions
, combinations of literaltext and wildcard characters. You can use regular expressions to find text that matches agiven pattern and then replace those matches with new text.If this all sounds complex, don't worry. We'll introduce it in easy steps, explain things aswe go, and provideseveral working examples.You can use the information in this column with Word 97, 2000, and 2002. The user interfaces vary slightly between theversions, but you can accomplish the tasks described here with each version.
A quick spin through the jargon
To start, let's define a couple of terms:
•
A
wildcard character
is a keyboard character that you can use to represent one or many characters. For example, the asterisk (*) typically represents one or morecharacters, and the question mark (?) typically represents a single character.
•
In our case, a
regular expression
is a combination of literal and wildcardcharacters that you use to find and replace patterns of text. The literal textcharacters indicate text that must exist in the target string of text. The wildcardcharacters indicate the text that can vary in the target string.That may seem a bit abstract, but you've seen (and most likely used) wildcard charactersand regular expressions since you first began computing. For example, the
Open
dialog box (on the
File
menu, click the
Open
command) uses the asterisk wildcard character extensively:And, if you ever used the MS-DOS operating system, you probably used a command anda simple regular expression to copy files:
copy *.doc a:
 That command uses the asterisk wildcard character and the
.doc
literal text string to copy
 
a set of Word documents to hard disk drive A. If you look around a bit, you'll see thatMicrosoft Windows® and the Microsoft Office applications use wildcard characterseverywhere.
Try it!
The steps in this section explain how to use a regular expression that transposes names.Keep in mind that you always use the
Find and Replace
dialog box to run your regular expressions. Also, remember that if an expression doesn't work as expected, you canalways press CTRL+Z to undo your changes, and then try another expression.
To transpose names
1.Start Word and open a new, blank document.2.Copy this table and paste it into the document.Josh BarnhillDoris HartwigTamara JohnstonDaniel Shimshoni3.Press CTRL+F to open the
Find and Replace
dialog box.4.If you don't see the
Use wildcards
check box, click 
More
, and then select thecheck box. If you don't select the check box, Word treats the wildcard charactersas text.5.Click the
Replace
tab, and then enter the following characters in the
Find what
 box. Make sure you include the space between the two sets of parentheses:
(<*>)(<*>)
6.In the
Replace with
box, enter the following characters. Make sure you includethe space between the comma and the second slash:
\2, \1
7.Select the table, and then click 
Replace All
. Word transposes the names andseparates them with a comma, like so:Barnhill, JoshHartwig, DorisJohnston, TamaraShimshoni, DanielAt this point, you may wonder what to do if some or all of your names contain middleinitials. See the first example inPutting regular expressions to work in Wordfor moreinformation.The next section explains how those regular expressions work.
What makes the expression tick 
 
From here on, keep this principle in mind: The content of a document controls most (butnot all) of the design of your regular expressions. For example, in the sample table youused earlier, each cell contained two words. If the cell contained two words and a middleinitial, you'd use a different expression.Let's examine each expression from the inside out:In the first expression,
(<*>) (<*>)
:
•
The asterisk (
*
) returns all the text in the word.
•
The less than and greater than symbols (
< >
) mark the start and end of each word,respectively. They ensure that the search returns a single word.
•
The parentheses and the space between them divide the words into distinctgroups: (first word) (second word). The parentheses also indicate the order inwhich you want search to evaluate each expression.In other words, the expression says: "Find both words."
Note
Searching on this expression,
(*) (*>)
,
 
 produces the same results. However, theexpression in the example is easier to describe, and you should use restricting characterswhenever you can, because doing so ensures greater accuracy in your results.In the second expression,
\2, \1
:
•
The slash (
\
) works with the numbers to serve as a placeholder. (You can also usethe slash to find other wildcard characters. See the next section for moreinformation.)
•
The comma after the first placeholder inserts the correct punctuation between thetransposed names.In other words, the expression says: "Write the second word, add a comma, write the firstword." Next, let's take a look at the full set of wildcard characters and what they do.
Wildcard character reference
The following table lists and describes the wildcard characters that are available for usein Word. Keep one fact in mind as you go: Wildcard characters become more powerfulwhen you combine them.
To find thisType this characterExamples
Any singlecharacter 
?
 
s?t
finds "sat" and "set." This character also findsthe chosen combination of characters within aword. For example, it could locate "set" within"inset."Any string of 
*s*d
finds "sad" and "started." The asterisk returns
of 00

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how To Download this word File.

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