[Solved] Find and Replace

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jmk
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[Solved] Find and Replace

Post by jmk »

I'm (re) writing a paper on melanges. There are dozens of instances of mélange and melanges in the paper. It's a huge time involvement in inserting a special "diacritic acute" for the first "e", every time I type the word. I can't seem to find a way to Find and Replace a word with a diacritic mark. Help? And thanks.
Last edited by Hagar Delest on Fri Apr 28, 2017 9:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: tagged [Solved].
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acknak
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Re: Find and Replace

Post by acknak »

This should match either spelling:

Edit > Find & Replace
Search for: \bm[eé]lange(s?)\b
Replace with: melange$1 OR mélange$1 — whichever spelling you want
Options/Regular expressions: ON

Click Replace All
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jmk
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Re: Find and Replace

Post by jmk »

Thank you. In your string, you show one "e" with the diacritic acute. When I'm trying to do the Find and Replace, there doesn't seem to be any way to put the "e" with the diacritic in the Find or the Replace string. How do I get to that special diacritic "e" to put it in the string?
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robleyd
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Re: Find and Replace

Post by robleyd »

One option is copy/paste. There are keyboard methods described here for accented letters and other symbols.
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acknak
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Re: Find and Replace

Post by acknak »

Right. You can copy/paste from the post above into the Find/Replace dialog window.

Or you can copy/paste from your document. Or you can try the numeric code entry methods. Or you can use the "Insert Special Character" window that comes with OO. I believe the keyboard shortcut for that is Ctrl+Shift+S
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MrProgrammer
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Re: Find and Replace

Post by MrProgrammer »

jmk wrote:There are dozens of instances of mélange and melanges in the paper. It's a huge time involvement in inserting a special "diacritic acute" for the first "e", every time I type the word. … Help?
Create AutoText entries for those words any any others that are tedious to type (Edit → AutoText). Insert AutoTexts with F3. Read about AutoText in Help → Index or in User Guides (PDF) or searching for topics about them in the Writer Forum.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.
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Re: Find and Replace

Post by jrkrideau »

jmk wrote:I'm (re) writing a paper on melanges. There are dozens of instances of mélange and melanges in the paper. It's a huge time involvement in inserting a special "diacritic acute" for the first "e", every time I type the word.


This does not answer your direct question but for future use, look into changing your keyboard layout. I normally use English (International AltGr dead keys) in Linux (Ubuntu). An é is simply a matter of holding down the right Alt-key and pressing e. I think the layout name for the equivalent Windows keyboard is similar very similar. The keyboard seems to provide the main Western European language diacritic symbols.

Alternatively, assuming you are using a standard QWERTY keyboard (UK/US/etc.), perhaps switch to a French-Canadian keyboard? Most of the keyboard layout is the same as an English language QWERTY with some differences in where punctuation marks appear. This keyboard provides a dedicated É & é key where the ? & / appears on the QWERTY keyboard. If you are typing straight text there is almost no difference in using the two layouts.

French-Canadian Keyboard
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jmk
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Re: Find and Replace

Post by jmk »

Thanks to all. One of those methods is certainly going to work.
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