Experienced WP operators and Secretaries who make use of the following featured scenario be aware to "be aware". A great feature that can do some damage.
What is this about? There are situations where you want to use search and replace to take care of something that may not be for the entire document but for a selected (highlighted) piece of text. I'll give you a few examples:
1. You have 10 lines in a particular paragraph with a of (I), (ll), (lll) type numbering system throughout the 10 lines and you want to quickly protect that particular paragraph with non breaking space after each closed parenthesis.
2. You have multiple areas in a document that look like inside addresses, multiple line letterheads or multiple line Titles where you want to make use of soft returns instead of hard returns with the exception of the last line.
3. Finally you have an area of text that says "for a period of 20 days" numerous times in a particular paragraph and you need to switch that over to 25 days.
So, we highlight the piece or area of text that we wish to affect with our global replace. I like to use the Control H shortcut.
1. When you run the global replace, it will do the replace on the text you highlighted and will then give you a message that it has made X number of replacements and asks you if you wish to now run it for the remainder of the document and to that you say "NO"
2. If you are not paying attention and you say yes, then depending on what you set the search up to do, you may do a lot of damage to a large document and you May Not Even Notice.
3. If it were a small document, you most probably would notice this and take action to "Undo" the problem. In a large file, this type of error could be replicated 100's of times and barely noticed. Then, you go ahead and save your document not knowing there is now major problems from a global replace that was meant to only affect a small portion of the document. You then give it back to Mr. or Ms. Attorney
4. In sum, when you run a global replace that involves the highlighting of a selected portion of text, be alert, run the global and when it stops to ask you whether you want to run it for the remainder of the document say NO.
5. Potential problems are totally avoidable by just being alert. Also, we can't be certain that we can fix the document quickly or get our hands on a pristine copy before the occurrence happened so be alert.
louis@advanceto.com
Good post. I like to just use find next in a smaller document and it makes total sense to highlight just the area you wish to confine to change.
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