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Inspiring
August 15, 2017
Answered

Find Words Written with Caps Lock

  • August 15, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 3839 views

Hey everybody,

So in this series of books, the word doc comes with some words typed out in all caps - but not stylistically - just with caps lock or the shift key. I need it to be in Title Case.

I'm aware that if I do a global find/replace for all caps to lowercase or title case, I may lose some necessary capitalization.

What I was wondering is if there is a simple way to search for these instances so I can change them at my own discretion - and make sure that none get left in the text by accident.

Thanks!

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Correct answer Peter Kahrel

To look for words in capitals, use this grep: \u\u+ which stands for 'a sequence of two or more capitals'. Click 'Find first' until you find an instance that you want to convert to title case, then press the keyboard shortcut for title case (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T on Windows).

To make your life easier, you can assign 'Find first/next' to a key in the Keyboard Shortcuts window, so that a single key press triggers 'Find next'. Very useful if you use the Find/Change dialog a lot -- and who doesn't in InDesign?

1 reply

amaarora
Inspiring
August 15, 2017

Hi,

RaizelDesign  wrote

I'm aware that if I do a global find/replace for all caps to lowercase or title case, I may lose some necessary capitalization.

What I was wondering is if there is a simple way to search for these instances so I can change them at my own discretion - and make sure that none get left in the text by accident.

In this case, can use your global search query and find and change each instance specifically... using the "Find next" and "Change" (not Change All) buttons in the Find/Change dialog box.

If that is not something you wanted, you can hear interesting podcast (after 12:50) that also talks about this problem: https://indesignsecrets.com/watch_listen/indesignsecrets-podcast-222

It does provide links to some useful grep queries and scripts.

-Aman

Inspiring
August 15, 2017

Right, that'w what I plan on doing, but I wanted to know if anyone knows what GREP I could insert to have it look for words written in all caps (not words with all caps applied to them.)

I'm not as handy with GREP as I'd like to be.

amaarora
Inspiring
August 15, 2017

Hi,

I cannot think of any Grep that does not fail under any case..

Maybe other folks who are good in Grep can suggest you one that works nicely.

Until then, you can hear that podcast and try out the script it provides.

-Aman