Find/Replace Reference

This article contains information regarding the Find/Replace functionality offered in the designer. With Find/Replace, you can easily change properties across tags in your document.

We highly recommend you make a copy of a template before running Find/Replace. There is no undo operation and if you make a mistake, it might take some time to get back to the original.

How to access Find/Replace

  • To access the Find/Replace functionality, click on the Windward Tools in the Microsoft Word ribbon. You will find it in the Tools section.

Find/Replace Window Interface

There are two main parts to this interface; the Find/Replace text boxes at the top and the "Search Options" section in the lower half of the window.

  • Find What: In this text bar, enter the table name, data source, condition, select statement or any other tag property you are trying to find and replace (this will differ in functionality depending on your data source and format of the tags)
  • Replace With: In this text bar, enter what to replace with what was found
  • Next: If selected, the software will find results after the current position in the document.
  • Previous: If selected, the software will find results before the current position in the document.
  • All(story): If selected, the software will return results for the story you are in. Stories are:
    • Document body
    • Header
    • Footer
    • Footnotes
  • All(document): If selected, the software will find results in the entire document.
  • Match Case: If checked, the search will be case sensitive and search for the exact word/phrase/statement
  • Find whole properties only: If checked, only tags whose entire text matches the search criteria will be found. For example, if the Find What box says "Windward", the tool will act upon tags with the text "Windward" only but not tags with the text "WindwardStudios".
  • Use Regular Expressions: If checked, you can place regular expressions to find (but not replace) text. For a full list of regular expressions, please see http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html
  • Create Property: If checked, you can create properties (condition, credentials, data source, etc.) for tags that don't have the properties you have selected, and then put values in those properties.

Example of when this tool is useful

Say you give your data source a nickname TestSQL, and then you move your templates to a production server where the SQL connection is different. You create the new SQL connection and want to keep them distinct so you give it a new nickname, ProdSQL. 

You would then need to update the attribute data source in every single tag in the document.

The Find/Replace is a powerful feature because you can have it search all tag types, then look for the old text TestSQL and replace with the new text ProdSQL. This will save time, as you did not need to touch each tag individually.

Searching Headers and Footers

If you want the Find/Replace to include the header/footer, you need to select All(document). There is no other way to search the entire document.

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