I'm trying to format text within square brackets.

Using "\[*\]" is what I usually use to select text within brackets, but it is limited in that it will only find the first closing bracket.

Where there are brackets within brackets, it comes up short, e.g.: with "[brown [fox] jumped]" the selection will end at the bracket after fox. I want the selection to end at the final close bracket after jumped.

Don't suppose anyone has a quick way of selecting all the text within open bracket until the close bracket?

Cheers

To get the inner pair:
Find = \[[!\[]@\]
To get the outer pair as well:
Find = \[[!\]]@\[[!\[]@\][!\[]@\]
Although asterisks can be used instead, they're liable to return an unbalanced match if there's yet another level.

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

Thanks - that finds the end of 2 sets of brackets - but didn't seem to work for more than 2?

Don't suppose you know how to select from the first open bracket to the last close bracket?

Cheers

With Find/Replace you need to build a Find expression that will exclusively identify the number of sets of nested brackets you're interested in, just as I've shown how to do for one and two sets. Otherwise you need a macro. To see what's involved with that, check out the Do While loops in the Convert Text Representations of Fields to Working Fields macro in the Mailmerge Tips and Tricks 'Sticky' thread at the top of the Mailmerge forum: https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-...ps-tricks.html

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

My god - has it been two years already!

I didn't say thanks for this. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to create a macro from that one, but thanks heaps for trying to point me in the right direction.

thanks mate.

cheers