Search for text NOT in a particular paragraph style

[MrZZY]

Is there a way to search Text/Grep for phrases that are NOT in a particular paragraph style?

In case you're wondering why I'm asking – I'm doing some consistency checks and don't want to just fire off a search replace that I know will affect hundreds of instances, so it would be better to check those few that have either been missed, or don't need to be changed (if that makes sense!)

[Barb Binder]

Hi Zimbop:

As you suspect, you can limit a search to a specific paragraph or character style, but not specify that that it matches anything but a specified style.

Maybe it would be helpful if the search in Story Editor view so that you can just glance at the paragraph style in the styles column at the left of the window as you examine each match? Not sure, since we don't know exactly what you are looking for.

~Barb

[FRIdNGE · Accepted solution]

Hi Barb,

Sorry but absolutely not! It's even a simplistic game, playing with 2 regex: the first to apply a condition to the paras using the para style to be excluded, the second to run a find/replace on all the text with "no condition" applied!

I let you make screenshots as usual.

Best,

Michel, for FRIdNGE

[MrZZY]

Thanks. This enabled me to flag (condition) all text that was already in the required format, then search for those instances that remained (unconditional). Excellent workaround, thanks Michel.

[MrZZY]

Thanks for the tip but there was 1200+ instances, really too many (I don't have that superpower!).

[FRIdNGE]

As in the real life, there're only just some Super-Heroes here! … 

Search the guys with the Badge "S"!

Best,

Michel

[Jongware]

If all of your regular text is in black – a fairly reasonable assumption – then:

1. Change the color of your not-wanted paragraph style to Red.

2. Search for your phrase and specify its color must be black.

3. When satisfied, change the main paragraph color back to black.

If you have multicolored text: you can use any text attribute to rule out your style. Only (I think) three things count: use something that you did not use anywhere in the text as a "proper" attribute (and particularly if you suspect that you might have used it in manual overrides rather than character styles), use something that does not cause the text to reflow (usually highly preferred, unless you are still in a preparation phase), and make sure to use something that appears in the Find/Change dialog, as there are a handful of properties that do not.

Other than plain text color, my preferred method as it is highly visible, you could try weird stuff such as the text outline color (without setting a width) and the Underline Gap Color.

[Milkrow]

Thank you for this very helpful suggestion. It made a snap out of deleting out all other content besides text styled in red so the resulting list of names was easy to copy and paste into a spreadsheet for comparison. Yay!

[Barb Binder]

Hey, we both learned something here today. Glad you got it figured out.

~Barb

[MrZZY]

Yeah, I learned something from every response! Brilliant forum