Difficult search

mysterytramp · #1 05-27-2015, 10:59 AM

I need to find each instance when a specific word (actually an acronym) is not preceded by "the" (or "The").

Any way to do this?

mt

Mandy11 · #2 05-28-2015, 06:28 PM

Will Edit Find work?

Robert2 · #3 05-29-2015, 01:24 AM

To be able to do this through Find/Replace, Word would need to have support for regex “negative lookbehind” (to be able to assert that what immediately precedes the current position in the string is not the exclusion text). Word has no such support.

Still, you might get by with the following wildcard search.

Find What: [!e]^32ACRONYM

eNGiNe · #4 05-31-2015, 10:55 PM

Macro to add index markers for all occurrences of {single word} {acronym}? Way outside my skill set, but just a thought … you could then scan the index by eye, or perhaps even sort the results in an editor; at least you'd have an overview. A twin macro to remove the index markers once you've finished would probably be handy, too.

mysterytramp · #5 06-05-2015, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert2

To be able to do this through Find/Replace, Word would need to have support for regex “negative lookbehind” (to be able to assert that what immediately precedes the current position in the string is not the exclusion text). Word has no such support.

Still, you might get by with the following wildcard search.

Find What: [!e]^32ACRONYM

Thanks. This handled it fairly well.

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