Every time I think I have gotten a handle on this tool, I end up struggling to create even simple expressions for practice. I can follow explanations and have had occasional successes, but then get stumped on basics. I don't know why I can't get it.

My latest idea, just now, was to find words ending in "me" with only two letters preceding. That is, the search would find "same" and "some" but not "theme" or "resume".

Here are some of a number of expressions I tried that don't work, but I don't know why not:

[?](2)me>
?{2}me>
[ ]?{2}me>
<[?]{2}me>

The question mark is any single character, the curly bracketed 2 should limit to only two characters, and me> ends the word. The last expression works by itself, but, of course, finds any words ending in "me".

Putting a space in brackets before the ?, or a < could, it would seem, signal the beginning of the word.

Any help appreciated.

You could, of course, use:
<??me>
or:
<[! ]{2}me>

The ? is not, apparently, a valid character within [], so [?](2)me> won't work and, even if it did, that expression would only find strings in words of any length ending in 2me.

The ?{2}me> find strings words of any length from the insertion point until it encounters a word ending in me.

etc.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]