better Find/Change

[FieryPantone]

… including

• regular expressions
• history lists for both find and change terms
• copy selection as find term
• place cursor in find field when opening dialog – the time I've lost when I've not paid attention and FM has interpreted what should have been a find string as a command
• find/change text+style

[Majestic_Swirl01AB]

Find/Change from-to any type of tag or style at and below the book level.

For example, change the name of a condition tag or object style at and below the book level. From "Online" to "Screen" in every file in a book.

[Stefan Gentz]

I'm aware that this is an old post … But if you are still interested in this (or anyone else coming here through search): There is a free ExtendScript provided by Adobe that can do exactly this: You can download it here: ExtendScript of the Week: Change Styles (Paragraph / Character / Table) – TechComm Central by Adobe.

[Stefan Gentz]

And one comment on the initial ideas:

… including

• regular expressions
• history lists for both find and change terms
• copy selection as find term
• place cursor in find field when opening dialog – the time I've lost when I've not paid attention and FM has interpreted what should have been a find string as a command
• find/change text+style

Except for the last one, all these ideas have been implemented meanwhile (in FM 12 and 2015). In FrameMaker (2015 Release) you now have Regular Expressions (aka "RegEx") for Find & Replace. You have a (session based) history list for both the find and replace string (if nothing is selected the last used string is used). If some text is selected and you open the Find/Change dialog, the selected text is automatically copied into the find term. When you open the Find/Change dialog, the cursor is automatically placed in the Find field.

Find/change text+style is not yet implemented.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi Stefan,

There are a few bug reports about this ExtendScript. Do you know whether these are fixed?

ExtendScripts are good. Still I would prefer, if FrameMaker would be able to replace a paragraph tag without an ExtendScript.

And also character tags.

Currently FrameMaker can only replace with a specific format which I had copied into the clipboard, but not with a character tag.

Best regards

Winfried

[Stefan Gentz]

Hi Winfried,

Do you have some links for me where people describe bugs? If you refer to the comments in the blog post, I'm already aware of them.

I have initiated an internal discussion about this very old wish (also an old wish of mine).

Best,

*Stefan.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi Stefan,

In your post above:

ExtendScript of the Week: Change Styles (Paragraph / Character / Table) – TechComm Central by Adobe

At the bottom there are some comments and bug reports.

Sorry that I was not clear.

Best regards

Winfried

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

While awaiting an Adobe fix for this I use Rick Quatro's FindChangeFormatsBatch script.

Not free, but I find it invaluable for swapping names and formats for various pieces of a template.

-Matt

techcommtools.com