Writer Guide

2) To replace the text with different text, type the new text in the
Replace with box.
3) You can select various options, such as matching the case,
matching whole words only, or doing a search for similar words.
(See below for some other choices.)
4) When you have set up your search, click Find. To replace text,
click Replace instead.
Tip
If you click Find All, Writer selects all instances of the search
text in the document. Similarly, if you click Replace All
button, Writer replaces all matches.
Caution
Use Replace All with caution; otherwise, you may end up with
some hilarious (and highly embarrassing) mistakes. A mistake
with Replace All might require a manual, word-by-word
search to fix, if not discovered in time to undo.
Use wildcards (regular expressions)
Wildcards (also known as regular expressions ) are combinations of
characters that instruct OOo how to search for something. Regular
expressions are very powerful but not very intuitive. They can save
time and effort by combining multiple finds into one.
Table 2 shows a few of the regular expressions used by OOo.
Tip
The online help describes many more regular expressions and
their uses.
Note
One of the most common mistakes when using regular
expressions is to try to search for a character that is defined as
a wildcard, such as brackets or dots. If you need to search for
such a character, type a backslash (\) before it. This instructs
OOo to treat the character following the backslash as a normal
character. For example, to find the text $5.00 ($ and . are
wildcard characters), you would conduct a search using \
$5\.00.
To use wildcards and regular expressions when searching and
replacing:
1) On the Find & Replace dialog box, click More Options to see
more choices. On this expanded dialog box (Figure 56), select the
Regular expressions option.
72 OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide