[Solved] Find & Replace feature not working

[DavidAshman]

I have seen some other posts regarding similar things but still unable to resolve the issue.

I am unable to find text in OO spreadsheets using Find and Replace. I have tried every combination of options I can think of but each time I get the diog box saying "Open Office has searched to the end of the sheet. Do you want to continue from the beginning?" and "Search key not found".

I have reinstalled Open office to the latest version. Tried it in various different spreadsheets but nothing is working.

Please help!!!

Thank you

[Zizi64]

There are some options (for example:" Entire cell", "Match case", "Regular option") what will basically modify the result of the search.
If you search some special characters, maybe they are regular expression characters...
Can you upload an example .ods file here with some instructions: What you want to search and replace?

[DavidAshman]

Thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately I have tried checking and unchecking every option in various combinations without any success. The main thing I need to search and locate is individual email addresses, however, I have created a new spreadsheet with a few basic words in and still am unable to search successfully.

[Zizi64]

Please upload your axample .ods file and give us the information, what string or value you want to find.

[DavidAshman]

I am unable to give the actual .ods file I need to search as it contains a lot of private contact information. I can upload one that has some random words to see if you are able to successfully search on your system.

[DavidAshman]

Here is a test file

[Zizi64]

It works for me in my AOO4.1.2 with the displayed options (the cursor located in the cell A1 at starting):

The cell A3 contains a string "mouse " [there is a space at end of the word], therefore the word to search "mouse" [without a space] will not work when you use the "Entire cell" option.

[DavidAshman]

Thank you. I will look into it more when I get chance.

[DavidAshman]

I have managed to work out why I am unable to find the text I am looking for, but unfortunately not a solution.

Basically, I have a very large spreadsheet that has the contact details of thousands of people. Some cells contain more than one email address separated with commas. When I receive a reply from one of those people I need to quickly locate their email address within that spreadsheet. If it's just a single email address in a cell then I don't seem to have a problem finding it. If the cell contains more than one email address then it is not possible to find it using the Find function.

Do you know if what I am trying to achieve is possible using the Find function? -

I really appreciate any advice you can offer.

David

[Zizi64]

Oooopsss!
You meant the Cell function named FIND()? (I meant the 'Find and Replace' function of the Calc application...)
That is an another case...

Please upload your example file with some dummy e-mail adresses. It must see the specific structure of your data.

[DavidAshman]

For some reason, without changing any settings, I now seem to be able to find the addresses I'm looking for! Thanks for your help and hopefully the issue is now solved.

[procadman]

I had a similar nightmare.
After building a file for weeks the "Find" function started to act up.
It would jump to several seemingly unrelated cells before getting to the one in the "find" criteria.
Turns out I had inadvertently bumped the similarity" option.
It all made sense after that.