Find (Ctrl+f) does not search inside equations

[Jennifer Murphy]

Is there a way to search for a text string inside of equations?



A search turned up nothing that works.

[macropod]

I'm not aware of any F/R support for finding a text string inside an equation. However, since all equations include a '=' sign, you can search for that. That will at least take you from one equation to the next.

[Jennifer Murphy]

Originally Posted by macropod

I'm not aware of any F/R support for finding a text string inside an equation. However, since all equations include a '=' sign, you can search for that. That will at least take you from one equation to the next.

Wow! That works. Thank you.

I did a little testing and learned that it can also find a lot of special characters, such as pi, infinity, the division symbol, and others. So if the equation I am looking for has any of those, I can get there even more quickly.

This is an 80-page document with dozens of equations, but being able to step through the equations is so much better than paging through 80 pages. Thank you very much.

I even tried saving the document as .txt, .rtf, .pdf, and several others. None of them were abbe to search inside equations.

If the Find function can find the "=" sign and other special characters, why the h*ll can't it find a variable name? This is either complete incompetence or arrogance or both.

What's the matter with this GD company? Do they have any competent programmers or management anymore? Office has so many bugs and design flaws that have been there for 10-15 years. They just don't seem to give a damn.

[Jennifer Murphy]

Paul,

I have a SEQ field set up to number the equations.

You don't happen to know of a way to generate a list of all of the equations in a document along with the sequence numbers, do you? Something like a list of figures?

Thanks,

-J

[macropod]

If you'd used Word's Insert Caption tool, for which one of the captioning options is 'Equation', generating a list like the list of figures would be a trivial undertaking - you could actually produce a 'table' of equations using References>Insert Table of Figures, setting the Caption label to 'Equation'. Without that, you'd need a macro to go through all the fields looking for the SEQ field code pertaining to your numbering.

[Jennifer Murphy]

Originally Posted by macropod

If you'd used Word's Insert Caption tool, for which one of the captioning options is 'Equation', generating a list like the list of figures would be a trivial undertaking - you could actually produce a 'table' of equations using References>Insert Table of Figures, setting the Caption label to 'Equation'. Without that, you'd need a macro to go through all the fields looking for the SEQ field code pertaining to your numbering.

I actually fiddled around with that a little. There were 2 problems I couldn't resolve:

1. I didn't see a way to get the list to show the actual equation. It just showed the caption text.
2. It seemed to require that I put the caption in a separate line before or after the equation line. I want to put it on the same line on the right.

I would like to have the equations in the document look like this:

some text....
    a = b + 1                    (1)
some text.... based on equation (1)...
    c = pi x r^2                 (2)
some text.... combining equations (1) & (2)...
    E = mc^2                     (3)
some text....

And then get a list that looks like this:

              Table of Equations
(1)  a = b + 1.....................7
(2)  c = pi x r^2.................23
(3)  E = mc^2.....................37

I couldn't get it to do that. Is there a way?

[macropod]

Originally Posted by Jennifer Murphy

There were 2 problems I couldn't resolve:

1. I didn't see a way to get the list to show the actual equation. It just showed the caption text.
2. It seemed to require that I put the caption in a separate line before or after the equation line. I want to put it on the same line on the right.

Re 1: That's how the list of figures works, which is what I thought from post #4 you were trying to emulate. Anything fancier would require a macro.
Re 2: You could use a Style separator (i.e. select the caption's paragraph break and press Ctrl-Alt-Enter), or simply format the caption's paragraph break as hidden text.

[Jennifer Murphy]

Originally Posted by macropod

Re 1: That's how the list of figures works, which is what I thought from post #4 you were trying to emulate. Anything fancier would require a macro.
Re 2: You could use a Style separator (i.e. select the caption's paragraph break and press Ctrl-Alt-Enter), or simply format the caption's paragraph break as hidden text.

I appreciate your help. I guess I'll go with the equation captions under the equations. It takes an extra line, which means less room on the page, but I can more or less copy the equation into the comments so that they show up in the list.

I'm afraid to try any of your work-arounds, especially if they involve macros or complex styles. Even if I get them working, I can never remember how they work and end up messing them up later and then cannot figure out how to recover.

Clearly, the wizards at M$FT know what I need better than I do, so I'll just fall in line. (sigh)

Again, thanks for your help.

PS: Now I have one more table that has to prompt me to get updated. Is there any way to tell Word to automatically update all tables and lists without prompting me every time?

[macropod]

Originally Posted by Jennifer Murphy

I'm afraid to try any of your work-arounds, especially if they involve macros or complex styles. Even if I get them working, I can never remember how they work and end up messing them up later and then cannot figure out how to recover.

There's no Style changes involved; just learning to either format the paragraph break as hidden (dead simple) or remembering how to use the Style Separator (something else to clutter the grey-matter). Obviously, you'd apply the hidden attribute or Style Separator to whichever of the caption & equation paragraphs occurs first.

Originally Posted by Jennifer Murphy

PS: Now I have one more table that has to prompt me to get updated. Is there any way to tell Word to automatically update all tables and lists without prompting me every time?

A Print Preview, printing the document or Ctrl-A, F9 should update all of them. Check, too, that Word's 'update fields before printing' option is checked. Another option would be to have a macro in the document or its template to auto-update the fields every time you open the document. Such a macro might be coded along the lines of:

Private Sub Document_Open()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
With ActiveDocument
  .Fields.Update
  .PrintPreview
  .ClosePrintPreview
  .Saved = True
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

[Charles Kenyon]

Installing Macros