Replace each find match instance with an increasing value

[defaultu0e43kqloi6n]

I have a text with a lot of reference notes. The original text simply has asterisks(*) to indicate the presence of a note, but I need to change these to serial letter values like footnote references (a, b, c, etc.)

Is there a way to select all the text on the page, find all asterisks, and replace them in a serial sequence? So the first instance gets replaced with a, the second with b, the third with c, and so on? If not with letters, I could use number values instead, and then do a second round of replacing 1 with a, 2 with b, 3 with c, etc.

I tried using the find/replace list script, but I can't figure out how to do this in sequence. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Note: I'm not using the inbuilt footnotes feature for a variety of reasons, so that's not an option.

[Mike Bro]

Hello @defaultu0e43kqloi6n,

Give the below script a try...

app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;
app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = "*";

var finds = app.activeDocument.findText();
if (finds.length > 0) {
  for (var i = 0; i < finds.length; i++){  
   finds[i].contents = String(i+1);
  }  
}
app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;

Regards,

Mike

[defaultu0e43kqloi6n]

Thanks, Mike! Works like a charm. Do you know what I would modify here to only search selected text? This script searches the entire document.

[Mike Bro]

this will work on a selected text box...

app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;
app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = "*";

var finds = app.activeDocument.selection[0].findText();
if (finds.length > 0) {
  for (var i = 0; i < finds.length; i++){  
   finds[i].contents = String(i+1);
  }  
}
app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;

Regards,

Mike

[defaultu0e43kqloi6n]

Thanks so much for taking the time!

[Mike Bro · Accepted solution]

You're welcome!

If you want to convert the "*" to a, b, c...try this script.

var alpha = ['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z'];

app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;
app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = "*";

var finds = app.activeDocument.selection[0].findText();
if (finds.length > 0) {
  for (var i = 0; i < finds.length; i++){  
   finds[i].contents = String(alpha[i]);
  }  
}
app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;

I'm sure someone here has a better way...

Regards,

Mike

[defaultu0e43kqloi6n]

Even better, that saves me the 2nd step of replacing the integers with alphas.

>I'm sure someone here has a better way...

Doubtful, it's pretty smooth!

[m1b]

Hi Mike,  just for learning, a string in javascript can be accessed using the index of characters. So you can write

var alpha = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
var e = alpha[4];

 but another way is to generate the character using the ASCII code:

var e = String.fromCharCode(97 + 4); // 'e'

- Mark 

[defaultu0e43kqloi6n]

Hi @m1b Mark and @Mike Bro Mike,

I've been using the above script on a project successfully for the past few months, but today I've run into an issue. I'm also using the native "FindChangeByList" script from time to time. The problem is that after I run FindChangeByList, the above script no longer works. It doesn't do anything. Other scripts still work, it's just this one that seems to be disabled when I run FindChangeByList first, apparently. However, if I fully quit InDesign and reopen the program, it works again. Very odd. Is there anything we can add to the above script to make it more stable?

Thanks in advance.

[defaultu0e43kqloi6n]

Well, I figured it out, if you're interested. It seems the other script was changing the text find preference to:

wholeWord:true

 I just changed the above script to Grep as a workaround, but I thought that this line would have cleared the find preferences before performing the search:

app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;

 That's obviously not the case; is there something else to add that would clear the "wholeWord:true" preference first?

[m1b]

Yeah, that preferences is in a different place: FindChangeTextOption. So you could use

app.findChangeTextOptions.wholeWord = false;

- Mark

[defaultu0e43kqloi6n]

Cool, thanks!