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Find/Change within a table. Change only the second instance

New Here ,
Jan 20, 2021 Jan 20, 2021

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Hi there, I am new to InDesign

 

I have made a planner in InDesign and I have made a mistake on the scheduling pages.
I have a table with rows and columns, sometimes three columns, sometimes more. in the first column there are times on every other row.


I have repeated 5pm where it should be 6pm so I have duplicate 5pm on over 365 pages in the planner.
I spent hours on the internet last night trying to find a solution and tried all sorts of find/change options including trying to use tab metacharacters like so: 5pm^t^t^t5pm and the GREP equivalent

 

I could do it all manually skipping the first 5pm and changing the second, but I don’t relish doing this nearly 400 times, plus I have another 8 versions of the planner with the same problem that i will need to change too. And if I do it manually, there is a great risk of error which will be even harder to detect.

 

In Microsoft Word, I can just copy the cells and paste them into the find field and replace the offending 5pm that way so I am finding it very frustrating not to be able to do that with InDesign

Has anyone got any idea how I can run a find/change and be able to “change all” in one go of just the second instance per page throughout the entire document/s

Thank you

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Jan 20, 2021 Jan 20, 2021

A solution—perhaps not the best solution—is to use Table > Convert Table to Text so that you can search for the string and replace it. Once done, use Table > Convert Text to Table to convert it back. If you aren't using styles, you will need to reapply the formatting.

 

I don't think GREP can address this—thought I'm not 100%. I suspect scripting can, but I'm not a scripter. 

 

~Barb 

 

tbl1.pngtbl2.pngtbl3.png

 

 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2021 Jan 20, 2021

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A solution—perhaps not the best solution—is to use Table > Convert Table to Text so that you can search for the string and replace it. Once done, use Table > Convert Text to Table to convert it back. If you aren't using styles, you will need to reapply the formatting.

 

I don't think GREP can address this—thought I'm not 100%. I suspect scripting can, but I'm not a scripter. 

 

~Barb 

 

tbl1.pngtbl2.pngtbl3.png

 

 

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New Here ,
Jan 20, 2021 Jan 20, 2021

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Thank you Barb, will give it a try

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New Here ,
Jan 20, 2021 Jan 20, 2021

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It looks like I can only change the table to text on a per table basis (unless I am doing something wrong) in which case it would be easier to just change the second instance manually.

Thank you for your response though.

I think I need another solution I'm afraid

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2021 Jan 20, 2021

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Yes, this command is performed one table at a time. 

 

~Barb 

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