Wildcard Find/Replace deletes extra character

[Cosmo]

I'm trying to do a Find/Replace with a wildcard to find text which doesn't have a certain character (in this case a circle-R) following it. This will eventually be done through a VBA script, but I am having issues doing it manually as well.



The search string I am using is "XXXXXXX[!®]", and the replacement string is "XXXXXXX®". The problem I am having is that it is replacing the next character after the search string (usually either a space or a period), so that if it found "XXXXXXX is a..." I get "XXXXXXX®is a..." and "XXXXXXX. The..." becomes XXXXXXX® The..."

[Cosmo]

I figured this out. I replaced my search pattern with:
"(XXXXXXX)([!®])"

and my replacement pattern with:
"\1®\2"


My mistake was I was reading the search as 'XXXXXX not followed by a ®", where it was really "'XXXXXX followed by any character except ®", and that character was part of the found string.