spencer@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Stephen N. Spencer) (04/18/91)
Ran across something interesting last night while using Microsoft Word 4.0a, and thought I'd share it, and perhaps gain a little insight into the situation. I had to replace all occurrences of the string "Todd's" to "Mark's" in a document. (not the double quotes, just the person's name, the apostrophe, and the 's' character) First try: Put "Todd's" in the 'Find' box, and "Mark's" in the 'Replace' box. Didn't find any of the occurrences of "Todd's" in the document. None of them. Second try: (after reading the reference manual) Put "Todd?s" in the 'Find' box, and "Mark's" in the 'Replace' box. Worked fine, though took longer than the searching did in the first try. Now I understand why the second try worked: the '?' is a wildcard, and of course it's going to take longer to search using that particular string. But why didn't the first try work? Anyone have a clue? ---- Stephen N. Spencer ACCAD - The Ohio State University 1224 Kinnear Road Columbus, OH 43212-1154 spencer@cgrg.ohio-state.edu
dana@are.berkeley.edu (Dana E. Keil) (04/18/91)
spencer@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Stephen N. Spencer) writes: >I had to replace all occurrences of the string "Todd's" to "Mark's" in a >document. Didn't find any of the occurrences of "Todd's" in the document. Sounds like you've probably got "smart quotes" turned on. When you type the apostrophe in the document it's curled instead of straight up and down. When you type the apostrophe in the change dialog box curly quotes doesn't work and it goes searching for the text string with a straight quote instead of a curly one. Try typing shift-option-] in the dialog box, that will give the curly apostrophe in the change box and then it should find what you want. You note that you have Word 4.0a so you're probably not having the other possible problem that was fixed (I'm pretty sure) in version A and afterward. There was a bug (or whatever it is that Bill Gates wants to call it) that caused searches to fail sometimes. The workaround was to click either the Whole Word or Match Upper/Lower Case (can't remember which one) checkbox on and off before starting the search. -- Dana E. Keil Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Berkeley dana@are.berkeley.edu
fwb@pollux.tmc.edu (Fred Brehm) (04/19/91)
In article <1566@gertie.osc.edu> spencer@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Stephen N. Spencer) writes: >I had to replace all occurrences of the string "Todd's" to "Mark's" in a >document. (not the double quotes, just the person's name, the apostrophe, >and the 's' character) > >First try: Put "Todd's" in the 'Find' box, and "Mark's" in the 'Replace' box. >Didn't find any of the occurrences of "Todd's" in the document. None of them. ... >But why didn't the first try work? Anyone have a clue? Do you have "Smart Quotes" turned on? If so, the apostrophe in the text can be a different character from the one in the Find dialog. Word isn't the only program to outsmart itself with this feature. Fred -- Frederic W. Brehm Siemens Corporate Research Princeton, NJ fwb@demon.siemens.com -or- ...!princeton!siemens!demon!fwb