how to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph
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12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 1/9
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Applies to Office | Office 2007 | Microsoft Office Word2645 views
How to find a lower case letter at thebegining of a paragraph?
I have a long document which is a converted file. Some paras are broken. How do I do a searchin Word 2007 to find paras which begin with a lower case letter preceded by a para mark ie ^pThank you
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Answer
In the Find dialog, click the More button and check the box for "Use wildcards". Then put thefollowing expression into the Find What box:
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Mamaijee asked on October 13, 2010MA
Jay Freedman replied on October 13, 2010Accomplishments
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12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 2/9
http://jay‐freedman.info
^13[a‐z]Then use the Find Next or Find In or Reading Highlight button, depending on what you want todo.If you want to use the Replace dialog to remove the paragraph marks from all the instances atonce, after checking "Use wildcards", put this in the Find What box:^13﴾[a‐z]﴿and put this in the Replace With box:\1﴾include a space character before the slash if the line before the paragraph mark doesn't end witha space﴿. Then click the Replace All button.
Jay FreedmanMS Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
4 people found this helpful
Answer
In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010
Did you use^13﴾[a‐z]﴿in the Find what control? It sounds like you just used^13[a‐z]
‐‐ Hope this helps.Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP, dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org Posted via the Community Bridge"Mamaijee" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...
Yes I did.
Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org
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Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP replied on October 13, 2010Accomplishments
12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 3/9
Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP
1 person found this helpful
All replies (11)
http://jay‐freedman.info
Answer
In the Find dialog, click the More button and check the box for "Use wildcards". Then put thefollowing expression into the Find What box:^13[a‐z]Then use the Find Next or Find In or Reading Highlight button, depending on what you want todo.If you want to use the Replace dialog to remove the paragraph marks from all the instances atonce, after checking "Use wildcards", put this in the Find What box:^13﴾[a‐z]﴿and put this in the Replace With box:\1﴾include a space character before the slash if the line before the paragraph mark doesn't end witha space﴿. Then click the Replace All button.
Jay FreedmanMS Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
4 people found this helpful
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Jay Freedman replied on October 13, 2010Accomplishments
12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 4/9
In reply to Jay Freedman's post on October 13, 2010
Jay, thank you for taking the time to reply, the find part worked correcty but when I did replace "\1" ﴾without quotes﴿ I keeping getting the message"The replace group text contains a number which is out of range". What should I do? Thank you
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Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP
In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010
Did you remember to select the “Use wildcards” option?
Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP
1 person found this helpful
In reply to Stefan Blom's post on October 13, 2010
Yes I did.
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Mamaijee replied on October 13, 2010MA
Stefan Blom replied on October 13, 2010Accomplishments
Mamaijee replied on October 13, 2010MA
12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 5/9
Be the first person to mark this helpful
Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP
Answer
In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010
Did you use^13﴾[a‐z]﴿in the Find what control? It sounds like you just used^13[a‐z]
‐‐ Hope this helps.Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP, dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org Posted via the Community Bridge"Mamaijee" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...
Yes I did.
Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org
1 person found this helpful
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Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP replied on October 13, 2010Accomplishments
Mamaijee replied on October 13, 2010MA
12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 6/9
In reply to Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP's post on October 13, 2010
Thank you Doug; It worked; you were absolutely right. I used ^13[a‐z] in the Find what controlinstead of ^13﴾[a‐z]﴿You have saved me a lot of work; appreciate it!Can u explain one more thing for my future reference ‐ I understood that ^13[a‐z] means thatWord will search for a para end sign followed by any alphabet in lower case; but what does \1mean in replace. U can tell I am not up with wildcards!
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Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP
In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010
For a full explanation of the use of Wildcards, see the following page of fellow MVP GrahamMayor's website:http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm‐‐ Hope this helps.Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP, dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org Posted via the Community Bridge"Mamaijee" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...
Thank you Doug; It worked; you were absolutely right. I used ^13[a‐z] in the Find whatcontrol instead of ^13﴾[a‐z]﴿You have saved me a lot of work; appreciate it!Can u explain one more thing for my future reference ‐ I understood that ^13[a‐z]means that Word will search for a para end sign followed by any alphabet in lowercase; but what does \1 mean in replace. U can tell I am not up with wildcards!
Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org
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Doug Robbins ‐ Word MVP replied on October 14, 2010Accomplishments
12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 7/9
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http://jay‐freedman.info
In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010
When you're using wildcards, if you enclose some part of the Find What expression inparentheses, that forms a "replace group". Then in the Replace With expression you can use \1 toinclude whateverwas matched by the replace group. If you enclose a second part of the Find What expression inparentheses, you can use \2 to include that group, and so on.There's much more about wildcards athttp://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm
Jay FreedmanMS Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
1 person found this helpful
In reply to Jay Freedman's post on October 13, 2010
Hello JayThe above tip was very helpful. It works when I do a search in Word 2007 to find paras whichbegin with a lower case letter preceded by a para mark ie ^pBut I come up with a problem; if the para begins with a lower case letter, but before that lowercase letter there is a space, then this does not work. What should I do to get over this please?Thank uMamaijee
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Jay Freedman replied on October 14, 2010Accomplishments
Mamaijee replied on December 7, 2010MA
12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 8/9
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http://jay‐freedman.info
In reply to Mamaijee's post on December 7, 2010
To find a paragraph that starts with any number of spaces or tabs and then a lower case letter,use the search term^13[ ^09]@﴾[a‐z]﴿Notice that there is a space character after the first bracket. The ^09 represents a tab character.You will have to do two separate searches ‐‐ one for paragraphs that have spaces or tabs at thestart, and one for paragraphs that have no spaces or tabs. Unfortunately, Word's wildcardlanguage cannot search for "zero or more" of a particular character, only for "one or more", sothere is no way to look for both kinds of paragraphs in the same search.
Jay Freedman MS Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
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Jay Freedman replied on December 7, 2010Accomplishments
12/1/2015 How to find a lower case letter at the begining of a paragraph? Microsoft Community
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653… 9/9
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