Find/Replace intermittently stops working

[greggsewell]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I'm editing a thousand-page book divided into five or six chapters and about a hundred resource guides, each for a single piece of band music. (It's a book for band directors.)

The resource guide authors (there are about 75) all sent Word documents, but the range of understanding of Word and basic formatting is enormous.

A feature of each guide is a three-column section called Form and Structure.

Many of the authors "formatted" the text for this section "into columns" via a hard return followed by several tab characters after every four to six words.

So, the point (finally there) is that I'm using Find and Replace heavily to eliminate varying numbers of tab characters using instances like this:

Find: ^p^t^t^t^t^t^t

Replace: <single space>

Sometimes I can select just the Form and Structure section of a document and press Replace All in the Find and Replace dialog.

Other times, it's more advantageous to click Find (or press Return) and then click the Replace (not Replace All) button, because the particular number of tab characters for which I'm searching may show up in a spot which does not need to be replaced (i.e., at the genuine end of a paragraph or sub-section).

When I click Find (or press Return -- this happens with either way of moving forward through the document), the command works four to six or seven times, then a dialog appears saying:

The search item was not found.

Yet I can see it in the main document window.

To get it to work again, I click the title bar of the main document window (I don't click in the document, though that has worked as well) and then the title bar of the Find and Replace dialog.

Alternating between the "Find" and "Replace" buttons works again, but only for four to six tries.

Sometimes the Find and Replace dialog loses focus, but the main document window doesn't gain it. It's as though I've clicked on the desktop, activating the Finder, because the title bars for both the dialog and document windows dim.

A hundred resource guides! I need this to work properly and consistently, though I despair that you WWs (that's Word Wizards) will have much more than "Yeah, F/R has been buggy for a while," and "You should report this." Not complaining about you folks, just complaining about our favorite word processor.

Oh, yes, some additional specs.

Word 12.1.1 (080522)
Mac OS X 10.5.4
2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
3 GB RAM

I've repaired disk permissions with no noticeable change in the behavior.

Finally (gee, I'm long-winded), thank you for your time and patience, your help and advice.

Cheers,

Gregg

 

[Elliott Roper]

So, the point (finally there) is that I'm using Find and Replace heavily to
eliminate varying numbers of tab characters using instances like this:

Find: ^p^t^t^t^t^t^t

Replace: <single space>

Ahhh. You need to pay more attention to the help.

Find: ^p^w

To your larger project. I'd think carefully about the overall planning.
Ask your publisher about the format he/she wants to see.
Think about how you will handle revisions and discussion of them with
all your contributors.
I guess you are stuck with all the work they have already done in Word,
with all their personal idiosyncrasies in how they think it ought to
look.

You are between a rock and a hard place.

If your publisher says InDesign or Quark or PDF, think again about
using Word 2008. 1000 pages and 76 authors, each with their own
misconceptions of typography?
At the very least, consider upgrading to Word 2004, where you can
record macros for slurping the inner goodness from your contributors'
documents.

In the best Irish farmhand tradition. "Oh, I wouldn't start from here"

Do you have music notation to deal with?

Hmm. Word is not where you would start from.

I'd work hard on the area you are already fighting with. How to extract
the meat from the mess your contributors have landed on you.
Carefully read "Bend Word to Your Will" for Clive's techniques for
insulating your document from the helpfulness of others.
http://word.mvps.org/mac/bend/bendwordtoyourwill.html

If you are self-publishing, then you should talk to your printers.
Almost without fail, they will say PDF.
In that case. In your shoes, I'd get a copy of InDesign CS3.
It will let you control the columns and layout and eventual
professional export for the printer in a way that will save you time
and money. Using Word to fight with that, and to get it to produce a
PDF that is any use to your printer is the thirteenth labour of
Heracles.

You can use Word to communicate with your contributors, and with a bit
of careful planning, you can set up your ID3 and Word styles to make it
really pleasant to control your manuscript. Copy and paste from Word to
ID is really quite usable.

I do a little bit of publishing that involves contributions from the
ransom note tendency of Word users. My technique is to use Word 2004
macros and external programs like emacs to tame the well meaning
exuberance of my contributors before placing the purified text and
illustrations into an InDesign book I carefully set up to match the
project. The printer gets PDF and the ID export on a DVD. It is rare
that I hear from them before the call to pick up the finished printing.

I would not dream of sending Word or even PDF produced from Word
anywhere near a printer who will charge me regardless of whether the
output is wrecked. A single print run costs far more than InDesign
Studio Pro. Need I say more?

Get yourself a proper professional tool.

 

[greggsewell]

Elliott,

Thanks for the tip about ^p^w. I've been using Word for years, and didn't have the foggiest clue as to what "white space" meant. And I have, btw, searched and searched through Word's help. Perhaps I was just too blind/dumb/whatever to see what I needed.

Anyway, on to two other things:

First, as to my project, it's definitely not self-published. I work for GIA Publications in Chicago. Our design staff has just switched from Quark to InDesign CS3 (which I also have on my machine).

And (also btw) I'm using Word 2008.

My contributors have all sent their work to an editor/compiler. As the copy editor for the job, I won't have to deal with them, only the principal editor.

My design staff requires a properly formatted Word file, and so that's what I'll give them. It's between them and the print shop as to what format they give to the prepress department.

Second (and last), my main concern was the intermittent way in which Find/Replace ceases to work without needing a new kickstart to get it going again.

Your ^p^w will certainly help in the future, and I thank you. But I'm still frustrated by the Find/Replace intermittent bug.

Thanks for all your help and advice.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Gregg,

A minor point but it may help, with some of this:

Many of the authors "formatted" the text for this section "into columns"
via a hard return followed by several tab characters after every four
to six words

to hold down the Option key and drag over the "columns" to copy/paste into a
new document in which you remove the rubbish.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

 

[Elliott Roper]

Elliott,

Thanks for the tip about ^p^w. I've been using Word for years, and didn't
have the foggiest clue as to what "white space" meant. And I have, btw,
searched and searched through Word's help. Perhaps I was just too
blind/dumb/whatever to see what I needed.

That's what this group is good at. I learn more than I give back. The
collective twistedness here is a powerful tool.

Anyway, on to two other things:

First, as to my project, it's definitely not self-published. I work for GIA
Publications in Chicago. Our design staff has just switched from Quark to
InDesign CS3 (which I also have on my machine).

Good choice. It's what I use, and I like it a lot.

And (also btw) I'm using Word 2008.

My contributors have all sent their work to an editor/compiler. As the copy
editor for the job, I won't have to deal with them, only the principal
editor.

My design staff requires a properly formatted Word file, and so that's what
I'll give them. It's between them and the print shop as to what format they
give to the prepress department.

(This next bit is probably in the teaching granny to suck eggs
department)
OK. In that case, I'd be working with the design staff to get your Word
styles and ID styles set up *exactly* the same. Fonts, leading, space
before and after, indents, the whole 9 yards. Then get good at paste
unformatted - the flavour that ignores the incoming styles and pastes
into the same style as the destination.
Then your design people will revel in how easy it is to place your Word
text into ID. It will pour into their linked text frames like water
into an ice-cube tray. With a simpler book, they could do the whole
thing in one operation. (almost - you don't want 'em to lose their
jobs)

Second (and last), my main concern was the intermittent way in which
Find/Replace ceases to work without needing a new kickstart to get it going
again.

Your ^p^w will certainly help in the future, and I thank you. But I'm still
frustrated by the Find/Replace intermittent bug.

Keep us informed. I regularly abuse find and replace without ever
needing the kick start you described in your original post. But I'm
still on 2004. I do keyboard shortcuts whenever I can. Since I leave
the mouse under a pile of dusty paper, it never contributes to losing
focus.

Since it looks like you need to carefully select the region you want to
F&R on, I'd strongly recommend going back to 2004, recording a macro
and assigning a keystroke to it. Your F&R workflow would then be
1. Select next region
2. Hit keystroke combo for the tab pruning macro.
3. Go to 1
I do that all the time. I have a macro to combine selected paragraphs
into one. Magic for sorting out stuff plagiarised off the web. ;-)

Macros like that is the main reason I did not downgrade to 2008.

Heh! You think you are long-winded? It looks like a fun project. I hope
it goes well.

 

[greggsewell]

Clive said:

....hold down the Option key and drag over the "columns" to copy/paste into a new document in which you remove the rubbish.

--------Well, I'll be. Another useful thing I didn't know about. Thanks very much.

Elliott said:

I'd be working with the design staff to get your Word styles and ID styles set up *exactly* the same.

--------Good point. When I ran a combination prepress/graphics department, that's what I encouraged clients to do.

Unfortunately, in my case, my employer doesn't want me, as the copy editor, to do any formatting at all. The mindset is that this is the design team's job.

Of course, I do have to find a way to set heads, subheads, pull quotes, and the like, and using styles is a fair bit more efficient than hand-marking (!).

I have plans when I've been here long enough (less than a year, currently) to begin a proactive program of suggestions. (If you'd like to place bets on the outcome, see www.willgreggfail.yep-nope)

I completely agree, Elliott, that this would be the best of all possible circumstances.

Unfortunately again, I've discovered that this book (the seventh in a series) will remain a Quark project, since the designer doesn't want to convert templates and do the set-up required to port the job to InDesign.

I suppose I could try the same sort of thing in with Quark styles, making them as compatible as possible with Word.

Elliott also said:

Since it looks like you need to carefully select the region you want to F&R on, I'd strongly recommend going back to 2004...

--------Oh, that I could. When I installed 2008, it removed all prior versions of Word.

I loved macros. While I don't detest the mouse, I'm enough of a power user to leave it alone as much as possible.

I did just as you suggested on many projects, with much success.

I've read and read all about AppleScript, and plunged into a few tutorials, but cannot find an easy way to "simply record a macro."

I don't want to learn to script. I just want macros back.

Yes, I've heard they will return, but until then...

Thanks again, all who responded.

And a special thanks to Clive, who's "Bend Word" document has revolutionized the way I work.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Clive said:

...hold down the Option key and drag over the "columns" to copy/paste into a
new document in which you remove the rubbish.

--------Well, I'll be. Another useful thing I didn't know about. Thanks very
much.

This group is good innit?
I never knew that either ;-)

Elliott said:

I'd be working with the design staff to get your Word styles and ID styles
set up *exactly* the same.

--------Good point. When I ran a combination prepress/graphics department,
that's what I encouraged clients to do.

Unfortunately, in my case, my employer doesn't want me, as the copy editor,
to do any formatting at all. The mindset is that this is the design team's
job.

Heh! Nick a copy of the Quark styles and do it on the quiet.

Of course, I do have to find a way to set heads, subheads, pull quotes, and
the like, and using styles is a fair bit more efficient than hand-marking
(!).

I suppose I could try the same sort of thing in with Quark styles, making
them as compatible as possible with Word.

yeah, go on! Do it!

Elliott also said:

Since it looks like you need to carefully select the region you want to F&R
on, I'd strongly recommend going back to 2004...

--------Oh, that I could. When I installed 2008, it removed all prior
versions of Word.

It should have installed it in a separate folder. Both will work side
by side. It is not too late to put it back. (Back up your fonts first,
and restore them afterwards. 2008's font installer is far saner than
2004's.) And those new fonts are damn good. (It is hard to get me to
say nice things about 2008, but look! twice in one post!)

I loved macros. While I don't detest the mouse, I'm enough of a power user to
leave it alone as much as possible.

I did just as you suggested on many projects, with much success.

I've read and read all about AppleScript, and plunged into a few tutorials,
but cannot find an easy way to "simply record a macro."

Some programs come with recordable Applescript support, but not Word
2008.

I don't want to learn to script. I just want macros back. Right on!
Yes, I've heard they will return, but until then...

Enough people complained. The noise of 2008 disks hitting the bottom of
trash cans round the world was heard in Redmond.

Thanks again, all who responded.

And a special thanks to Clive, who's "Bend Word" document has revolutionized the way I work.

You are not the only one.