InDesign

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Find and change text

If you want to list, find, and replace fonts in your document, you might want to use the Find Font command instead of the Find/Change command.

Find and change text

  1. To search a range of text or a story, select the text or place the insertion point in the story. To search more than one document, open the documents.
  2. Choose Edit > Find/Change, and then click the Text tab.
  3. Specify the range of your search from the Search menu, and click icons to include locked layers, master pages, footnotes, and other items in the search. (See Search options for finding and changing text.)
  4. In the Find What box, describe what you want to search for:

    • Type or paste the text you want to find.

    • To search for or replace tabs, spaces, or other special characters, select a representative character (metacharacter) from the pop‑up menu to the right of the Find What box. You can also choose wildcard options such as Any Digit or Any Character.

      Use metacharacters to search for special characters, such as a tab.

    • Use a predefined query to find and replace text. (See Find/change using queries.)

  5. In the Change To box, type or paste the replacement text. You can also select a representative character from the pop‑up menu to the right of the Change To box.
  6. Click Find.
  7. To continue searching, click Find Next, Change (to change the current occurrence), Change All (a message indicates the total number of changes), or Change/Find (to change the current occurrence and search for the next one).
  8. Click Done.

If you don’t get the search results you expected, make sure that you clear any formatting you may have included in a previous search. You may also need to expand your search. For example, you may be searching only a selection or a story instead of the document. Or, you may be searching for text that appears on an item, such as a locked layer or footnote, that is currently excluded from the search.

If you change your mind about replacing text, choose Edit > Undo Replace Text (or Undo Replace All Text).

To find the next occurrence of a previously searched-for phrase without having to open the Find/Change dialog box, choose Edit > Find Next. In addition, previous search strings are stored in the Find/Change dialog box. You can select a search string from the menu to the right of the option.

Find and change formatted text

  1. Choose Edit > Find/Change.
  2. If the Find Format and Change Format options don’t appear, click More Options.
  3. Click the Find Format box, or click the Specify Attributes To Find icon  to the right of the Find Format Settings section.
  4. On the left side of the Find Format Settings dialog box, select a type of formatting, specify the format attributes, and then click OK.

    Some OpenType formatting options appear in both the OpenType Options and Basic Character Formats (Position menu) sections. For information on OpenType and other formatting attributes, search for the related topic in InDesign Help.

    Note: To search for (or replace with) formatting only, leave the Find What and Change To boxes blank.
  5. If you want to apply formatting to the text found, click the Change Format box, or click the Specify Attributes To Change icon  in the Change Format Settings section. Then select a type of formatting, specify the format attributes, and click OK.
  6. Use the Find and Change buttons to format the text.

If you specify formatting for your search criteria, info icons appear above the Find What or Change To boxes. These icons indicate that formatting attributes have been set and that the find or change operation will be restricted accordingly.

To quickly remove all formatting attributes in the Find Format Settings or Change Format Settings sections, click the Clear button.

Common Find/Change techniques

Wildcard searches
Specify wildcards, such as Any Digit or Any White Space, to broaden your search. For example, typing “s^?ng” in the Find What box searches for words beginning with an “s” and ending with “ng,” such as “sing,” “sang,” “song,” and “sung.” You can either type wildcard characters or choose an option from the Wildcards submenu in the pop‑up menu next to the Find What text field.

Clipboard for metacharacter searches
To search for metacharacters such as em dashes or bullet characters, you may want to select the text first and paste it into the Find What box to spare the trouble of entering metacharacters.

Replace with clipboard contents
You can replace search items with either formatted or unformatted content copied to the clipboard. You can even replace text with a graphic you copied. Simply copy the item, and then, in the Find/Change dialog box, choose an option from the Other submenu from the pop‑up menu to the right of the Change To box

Find and remove unwanted text
To remove unwanted text, define the text you want to remove in the Find What box and leave the Change To box empty (make sure that no formatting is set in this box).

XML tagging
You can apply XML tags to text you search for.