Is there any way to use find/changeonly on certain pages? Let's say I have a 100 page document and I want to perform find/change or GREP type find/change on pages from 76 to 89. Any way to do that?
Probably not, unless someone can write a script to do that. If the text was in a continuous flow in one story, you could make a text selection across the page range, and search the range "Selection". If you were on one spread, you could select multiple stories by searching the range "Stories". You couldn't select in multiple stories on multiple spreads from the InDesign interface.
You could start the Find/Change on page 76 and then just use Change (Change, Change, Change) in lieu of Change All until you get to page 89. Or (way more work), drag those pages to a new file, run the F/Ch with Change All and then drag them back.
Is this still not possible in 2021 with InDesign (16.3.2)?
Came across metacharacter called Current Page Number ^N (Text tab) / ~N (Grep tab)...however, I'm not sure how to use it or I actually don't think this does what I would hope it would do.
The metacharacters you found are not going to do what you want. They are how you search the document for a page number, not a way to limit searches to a given page. It is still not possible to limit your search to a range of pages.
There's lots of ways to search; for example, if you had a single story threaded across three pages, you could select all that text with the Text tool and then do your Find/Replace action on the "Selection" choice on the Search dropdown. You can select multiple frames that contain text with the black pointer tool and then select Stories in the Search dropdown. But you can't tell InDesign "only search pages 7 through 10." But if what you want to do is find and replace on a single page, then selecting all the text frames on a single page or spread with the black pointer and choosing "Stories" from the Search dropdown should let you search only the single page or spread.
That works. I am able to just click and drag to select all most of the frames on the page...the one issue I am running into is that anchored text frames are included in the selection so I would have to click each frame individually to run the find and replace.
Do you know of a way to also include the anchored text frames into the overall selection?
If your pages are threaded and you can drag to highlight the text from page 76 to 80 then yes - in the find change dialog box select the option for Selection and it will only find in that particular section.
If all your pages are not threaded and each page is standalone with no threaded text. Then create a new document of the same measurements. And in the original document select the page range you want. In the Pages Panel sub menu select move pages. Select your new document as the target.
Once in the new doc do your find change
Perform the same steps to return the pages. (Removing previous content)
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