Finding and Replacing Text

Author-it's Find and Replace Text feature can find any characters or words in your document and optionally replace them with different text.

Choosing Find and Replace in the Library

From the Library, choose Replace to change individual instances of the text in the Selected Objects, Displayed Objects, or Library. The search locations are:

• Library - searches all objects within the Library.
• Displayed Objects - searches all objects in the folder or search object list.
• Selected Objects - searches the currently selected objects in the Library Explorer.

Choosing Find and Replace in the Editor

From the Editor, choose Replace to change individual instances of the text in the open topic, or throughout the book. Alternatively, choose Replace All to change all instances of a word in the topic, or throughout the book. The search locations are:

• Book - searches all Topics in the active Book.
• Topic - searches the currently active Topic.

Choosing Find and Replace in the Topic

From the topic, choose Replace to change individual instances of the text, or choose Replace All to change all instances of the text. The search location is:

• Topic - searches the currently active Topic.

When you replace text, the format and case (CAPITALS, Title Case, Sentence case, lower case) of the text are ignored, unless you specify otherwise in the settings option.

To Find and Replace Text:

1. Start the Find Text feature:
   • In the main window choose Author > Find > Find and Replace

     -or-

   • In the Editor choose Review > Find > Find and Replace

     The Find and Replace window is displayed.

     

2. In the Find what field, type the text you are looking for.
   • To find the text as a whole word (not part of a word), choose Settings > Match whole word. When this option is not selected you can find variants of the text, for example if you type "author" it could also find "authors" and "authoring".
   • To find only the text with the same case (CAPITALS, Title Case, Sentence case, lower case) choose Settings > Match case.
3. In the Replace with field, type the text you want to replace the original text with.
4. In the Look in field choose the search location (the options available depend on where you are searching - Library, Book, or Topic).
5. To begin searching, choose Find. Author-it finds the next occurrence of the text and highlights it.
   • If you are searching across multiple topics, each topic containing the text is opened one by one, and any changes you make to the topic are automatically saved when you move to the next topic. A progress bar showing the number of items being checked is displayed on the top right-hand corner of the Find and Replace window.
   • A message is displayed if no occurrences of the text are found. Choose OK to close the message window. You may want to try specifying different text to search for, then try again.
6. If you have specified replacement text:
   • To replace the highlighted text, choose Replace. Author-it replaces the selected text, and waits until you tell it to find the next occurrence by choosing Find again. You can check that the replaced text is how you want it before you continue.
   • To skip replacing this occurrence of the highlighted text, choose Find.
   • To replace all occurrences of the text, select the Replace drop-down and choose Replace All.

     

     Note: Be very careful when selecting the Replace All option across multiple topics as the changes cannot be undone.

7. A message appears when you have searched the entire area you specified earlier. Choose OK to close the message dialog, then close the Find and Replace window.