[Solved] Find/replace possible bug?

[jill bioskop]

Hello,
I used to be able to find double spaces, or space fullstop or several consequent letters in my texts. For several days now, the only thing you can find in the find window are words that have a space before and after them. Thus, if the word "butterfly" appears in your text and you search for "butter", there will be no results, because there is no space between "butter" and " "fly". This is a huge problem for people who need to have a tidy text and need to avoid mistakes like this one: "My name is Jill ."
OpenOffice used to be able to detect this space before the fullstop until several days ago, when I was searching for " ."
Now this is feature is no longer functioning.
I uninstalled and reinstalled but nothing changed.
Please Help!

[RoryOF]

On Find and Replace, drop "More options" and uncheck "Regular Expressions"

Also, on the main F&R window, uncheck "Whole words only" and perhaps "Match case".

[John_Ha]

Works fine for me.

Are you sure your spaces are normal spaces (entered with the space bar) and not required or non-breaking spaces (entered by Ctrl+Shift+spacebar)? If you copy from an email where the text has double spaces, the first is usually a non-breaking space? View > Field shadings ..., colours non-breaking spaces grey. View > Non Printing Characters ..., to see spaces and other control characters.

As a new poster you will find much useful information in the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials, the up to date Writer guide and the Writer Manual. May I suggest you bookmark the pages.

Press F1 to access the Help screen and search for your problem

The chapter headings in the manual are:

1 - Introducing Writer
2 - Setting up Writer
3 - Working with Text
4 - Formatting Pages
5 - Printing, Exporting, Faxing and E-Mailing
6 - Introduction to Styles
7 - Working with Styles
8 - Working with Graphics
9 - Working with Tables
10 - Working with Templates
11 - Using Mail Merge
12 - Tables of Contents, Indexes and Bibliographies
13 - Working with Master Documents
14 - Working with Fields
15 - Using Forms in Writer
16 - Customizing Writer – Keyboard shortcuts.

When a pop-up window opens, click the Help button for extensive help on that function - it is often more comprehensive than the manual.

[jill bioskop]

On Find and Replace, drop "More options" and uncheck "Regular Expressions"

Also, on the main F&R window, uncheck "Whole words only" and perhaps "Match case".

Many many thanks! Huge relief; It solved the problem!

[jill bioskop]

Are you sure your spaces are normal spaces (entered with the space bar) and not required or non-breaking spaces (entered by Ctrl+Shift+spacebar)? If you copy from an email where the text has double spaces, the first is usually a non-breaking space? View > Field shadings ..., colours non-breaking spaces grey. View > Non Printing Characters ..., to see spaces and other control characters.

Many thanks, it solved a related issue!