Lesson 20
Finding and Replacing Text
In this lesson, you learn to find text in a document, replace that text, and find text in a database.
Finding Text in a Document
You can easily find words and/or phrases in a document in Notes. You might want to find specific text in order to read about a topic, to refer to the page on which it appears, or to replace that text with new text.
To find specific text in a document, follow these steps:
- With the document in edit mode, choose Edit, Find/Replace. The Find and Replace dialog box appears (see Figure 20.1).
Figure 20.1 You can find all occurrences of a word or phrase in your document.
- In the Find text box, enter the text you want to find. The entry can consist of up to 45 characters and spaces, depending on the characters you enter and whether or not you use capital letters.
- (Optional) In the Match area of the dialog box, choose any of the following options:
Whole Word Finds the character string you entered only when a space precedes and follows the word. For example, if you enter “the” and do not choose Whole Word, Notes finds such words as “their,” “there,” “other.”
Accent Tells Notes to include diacritical accent marks (such as those that are used in foreign languages).
Case Searches for the character string that matches the case exactly, such as with names of programs or people.
- Click the Find Next button to find the next occurrence of the word in the text. Choose the Find Previous button to find the previous occurrence of the word. If it finds a match, Notes highlights the word in the text and leaves the Find and Replace dialog box open.
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If you just wanted to locate the word, click the Done button to close the dialog box so you can work in the document. If you want to replace the found word, move on to the next section. Figure 20.2 shows the Find and Replace dialog box, as well as the highlighted word that Notes found in the document.
Figure 20.2 You can find words anywhere in the document.
Shortcut Press Ctrl+G to find the word or phrase again without opening the Find and Replace dialog box. Notes remembers what you entered in the Find and Replace dialog box the last time, and it finds that text again.
Replacing Found Text
After you find text, you can replace it quickly and effortlessly using the Find and Replace dialog box. Follow these steps to replace the found text:
- In edit mode, choose Edit, Find/Replace. The Find and Replace dialog box appears.
- In the Find text box, enter the text you want to locate.
- (Optional) In the Replace text box, enter the text you want to substitute for the found text.
- Choose any options you want to apply.
- Click the Find Next or Find Previous button to move to the first occurrence of the word or phrase in the respective direction. If Notes finds a match, it highlights the text.
- (Optional) Click the Replace button to replace the highlighted text that Notes found with the text you typed in the Replace text box. Or if you’re sure you want to replace all occurrences, click the Replace All button to replace them all automatically.
- (Optional) Click Find Next or Find Previous to skip this occurrence and find the next occurrence of the specified text.
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When you finish with the Find and Replace dialog box, click Done.
Careful! Before you choose to Replace All in the Find and Replace dialog box, save your document in case something goes wrong. If you make a mistake, close the document without saving it. Then open it and try again.
Finding Text in a Database
Notes even enables you to search through any database of documents for specific words or phrases without opening each document. Instead of using the Find command, you use the Search bar. Notes searches the entire database and lists all documents containing the specified word or phrase.
To search through an entire database, follow these steps:
- In database view, choose View, Search Bar. The Search bar appears below the SmartIcon bar in your database.
- Enter a word or phrase in the Search for text box.
- Click the Search button. Notes lists all the documents that contain the word or phrase, with a check mark beside each one (see Figure 20.3).
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Click the Reset button to start a new search and display all of the documents in the database.
You can also set search criteria when you use the Search bar. To do so, click the button at the right end of the Search bar. The popup menu shown in Figure 20.4 appears.
Figure 20.3 Notes lists the documents that contain the search text.
Figure 20.4 Set search criteria using the Search bar popup menu.
In the popup menu, select any of the following search criteria:
- Include Word Variants Includes such variants as plurals in the search. For example, if you enter the word “network,” Notes finds “networks,” “networking,” and so on.
- Sort by Relevance Lists the documents with the most occurrences of the word first.
- Sort by Oldest First and Sort by Newest First Sorts the documents by date.
- Maximum Results Displays the Maximum Results dialog box in which you enter the maximum number of finds you want Notes to display; the default is 250 documents.
- Save Search As Displays the Save Search As dialog box in which you can name the search so that you can use it again with other databases. Once you save a search, its name appears at the bottom of the Search bar popup menu. Select the name to automatically carry out the search.
- Delete Saved Search Displays the Delete Saved Search dialog box from which you select saved searches and delete those you no longer use.
In this lesson, you learned to find and replace text within a document and to search for text in a database. In the next lesson, you learn to use the spell checker, doclinks, and popups.