Is there a way to do a Find all occurrences of a string (e.g. "xxx") and Replace each of them with a right-justified dot tab?



Ex:
January 1, 2023xxxNew Years' Day
becomes
January 1, 2023.........................New Years Day

I can Find xxx and Replace with ^t but this results in a standard tab characters, and not dot tabs.

I suspect this will require some vba code, but am unfamiliar with vba in Word.

Thanks.

You can easily do it with Find/Replace.
Find xxx and Replace with ^t, but associate the Replace string with a tab format (use the Format drop-down of the Find/Replace dialog).

Robert2
Thanks for responding. Your suggestion makes sense but I am unable to get it to work.
It inserts regular tab characters, not dot tabs. Any suggestions?

See Image

Doug

Attached Images

XXX No Joy.jpg (104.7 KB, 11 views)

Create a paragraph style that contains the dot-tab setting.
You can add the style to the replace with box.

You need to define the tab stop properties when the insertion cursor is in the Replace with box.
If you define the tab stop properties when the insertion cursor is in the Find box, it won't work.

I discovered a different way to accomplish my goal.

Assuming a document that has lines of text that start with a business name, followed by the address and ending with a phone number, and I we want to put the dots tab before the phone number.

Determine the inch measurement of the leftmost digit of the phone number when it is up against the right margin. We'll use 6.69".
Highlight the entire document. Control A
On the Home tab, Paragraph box, click the tiny icon in the lower right corner of the Paragraph box. This will open the Paragraph window.
In the lower-left corner of the Paragraph window, click the Tab button.
Enter 6.96 into the Tab stop position box.
Click Right for Alignment.
Select 2 for Leader.
Click Set.
Click OK