If I have some items that were variable names that should actually be strings, is there a quick way to quote them once I select them, or do I need to manually type in the quotes on each side of the string?
If you highlight a word, pressing a quote key such as " will quote the word, instead of replacing the word with a quote.
I was watching a video that showed a column of words in chrome inspector / sources/ snippets. The words were all selected and got surrounded simultaneously by double quotes. How was it done?
From https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/tips-and-tricks
"Column (box) selection
You can select blocks of text by holding Shift+Alt (Shift+Option on macOS) while you drag your mouse. A separate cursor will be added to the end of each selected line."
It also works in Chrome inspector. When selected, adding quotes added quotes to the beginning and end of every line selected.
When I type a single comma or quotation mark in VS Code editor, the editor automatically adds a second one, which is OK, but than it places the cursor outside right after the commas, so if I need to write something between the commas (Which is normally the case...) I need to move the cursor back between the commas.
I would like to change this behavior and place the cursor automatically between commas or quotations.
Does anyone have an idea?
I have a list of data to which I need to put a ' symbol at the start of the line and at the end of the line. So the original data looks like this:
abcde
cdeab
deabc
eabcd
And I want all of the lines to look like this:
'abcde'
'cdeab'
'deabc'
'eabcd'
In my real data, I would have 10,000 of lines. So if I can do something like Ctrl+Shift+A to select the entire document and then have some magic shortcut to change from selecting all lines to editing all lines that would be perfect!
You could edit and replace with a regex:
Find (Ctrl+F):
^(.+)$
Replace:
'$1'
This regex finds any content on a line and wraps it inside quotes. The $1 refers to whatever is matched inside the parentheses in the regex. In this case, it's "one or more characters" i.e. everything on the line. Be sure to tick the regex icon.
If every line may or may not have a space before the content, and you want every line to have a space, try this:
Find:
^ ?(.+)$
Replace (notice the space before the first quote):
'$1'
Here is an easy way to do this:
Ctrl+A to select all or select your desired text.
Shift+Alt+I to put a cursor at the end of each line.
Type your ' (or whatever you want at the end).
Home will move all your cursors to the beginning of the lines.
Type your ' (or whatever you want at the beginning of all the lines).
You can use the Alt + Shift shortcut.
First press Alt + Shift then click the mouse button on the first line.
Go to the last line, and then do the same.
This will mark all the parts of one side. Whatever you type will be reflected in the marked spaces.
Do the same on the other side too.
Use Toggle Multi curosr Modified from action pane.
Select the cursor points with ctrl + <Mouse click> , you can modify everything simultaneously.
This will require lots of manual efforts if lines are more
You can use Find and Replace.
Besides, paste to Excel and using a function to add character '.
The first thing that came to my mind - replace abcde with 'abcde' line by using option Find and Replace option. I'm pretty sure Visual Studio Code has something similar to that.
You can use the Shift +Alt shortcut for windows and for Mac use Shift + Option
First press Alt + Shift/Shift + Option then click the mouse button on the first line.
This will mark all the parts of one side. Whatever you type will be reflected in the marked spaces.
Place Cursor where you want to insert/delete text.
Goto Selection Menu and choose Column Selection Mode
Scroll to the bottom of the data and shift + click in the last line where you placed the first cursor.
Perform action (add/delete whatevs)
Repeat for whatever other areas you want to change.
v: 1.74.3
1- You can use the Ctrl + H shortcut (menu Edit → Replace)
Enter abcde in Find Control.
Enter 'abcde' in Replace Control.
Then press Ctrl + Alt + Enter.
I have a Word document with fields of the reference variety, which occur in the form "[field].[field]"--in other words, there's a period between the two fields. I want to globally replace this with a space.
Word offers the ^d special character to search for fields, but for some reason the query "^d.^d" does not find anything. However, ".^d" does. Now comes the problem, however--what do I specify as the replacement text in order to retain the field code? If using regular expressions, I could use a "Find What Expression" such as \1, but with regexp ("wild card") mode the ^d is not permitted.
I guess I could write a macro...
I would like to add to Bibadia's solution.
An example of an index entry field; we want to change a name we misspelled.
Make sure hidden formatting is displayed (toggle with SHIFT+CTRL+F8).
Make sure wildcards option is not selected. To search for fields, use the opening and closing field braces code (optionally use ^w for spaces, as Bibadia suggested):^19 XE "Deo, John" ^21
Replace won't recognize field braces character, but will allow to insert the clipboard's content. ;). To do that, insert in text the correct entry. CTRL+F9 to insert field and type:XE "Doe, John"
Select the field above and copy
Use ^c in the replace box
Hit Replace All
Ta-da!
It's usually better to go the macro route when finding fields because, as you say, the find algorithm that Word uses doesn't work the way you might hope with fields.
But if you know exactly what the fields contain, you can specify a search pattern that will probably work (however not in wildcard mode).
For example, if you want to look for figure number field pairs such as
{ STYLEREF 1 \s }.{ SEQ Figure \* ARABIC \s 1 }
(which would typically be the same set of fields everywhere in the document)
If you only really need to look for the following:
{ STYLEREF 1 \s }.<any field>
you could ensure that field codes are displayed and search for
^d STYLEREF 1 \s ^21.^d
or
^19 STYLEREF 1 \s ^21.^19
If you need to be more precise, you can spell out the second field as well.
"^d" only works for finding the field beginning, not the field end.
It's a shame that ^w wants to find at least 1 whitespace character because otherwise it would be more robust to look for
^19^wSTYLEREF^w1^w\s^w^21.^19
Perhaps someone else knows how to work around that without using wildcards?
Torzaburo,
I suggest that you do this using a macro. You can start by recording the macro, and later refining your processing steps within the macro.
First turn on the hidden characters by navigating to Home > Paragraph > toggle the show/hide Paragraph symbol. Also, select all and toggle the field codes on (right-click and select "Toggle Field Codes".
Open a new blank Word doc in addition to the one you have open. You will use this later. Start the macro recording and find the field using the "^d" (field code) as you said.
When the field is found, copy only the field text within the brackets, and not the full field reference. While the macro is still recording, ALT + TAB to the new blank document and paste the field code in as plain text.
At this point, do the necessary find & replace processing to the field codes. Highlight the processed field codes, copy, ALT + TAB back to the original document, and paste back between the { } brackets.
Stop the macro recording. Add any further custom processing to the macro VBA.
Select-All and re-toggle the field codes. Update the field codes.
You don't need a macro. Just toggle all field codes on by using Alt+F9. Then do a find and replace for what you want to change. Once the replacement is complete, use Alt+F9 again to toggle the field codes back off.
Disclaimer: I didn't originate this solution, but it's clean and elegant and I thought it should be included here:
(Adapted from Search & Replace Field Codes in Word):
Create or find a single instance of the field you want to convert text to
Toggle Field Codes visible (AltF9)
Copy the code for the field you want to use to the Clipboard (highlight and CtrlC)
Open the Replace dialog box (CtrlH), insert the text you want to replace in the Find What box and then enter ^c in the Replace With box.
This will replace your text with the contents of the Clipboard, turning it into the field code you copied in step 3. It also copies formatting information (font, color, etc.), to control how the field will appear when hidden. (Caveat: I've tested this with Word 2003 under Windows 7 only.)
Coming in late on this, probably way too late for Beth (sorry Beth). And this may not be quite what Beth was looking for. But for anyone interested ...
It sounds like Beth may have created captions throughout the document using INSERT CAPTION (hence the presence of field codes). This means these captions will have been (automatically) created in CAPTION style.
To globally replace the separator "." with " " (space) in such captions, take two steps:
[1] Go to REFERENCES | INSERT CAPTION, then click on NUMBERING and replace the SEPARATOR "." with "EM-DASH". This will replace all separators in captions for the selected label in the CAPTION Window. If you have other labels in use in the document (e.g. FIGURE), select the other labels one by one and repeat this process.
[2] Do a find/replace searching for special character "em-dash" (^+) in style CAPTION, replacing with " ". Click REPLACE ALL.
Voila!
NOTE: This presumes that em-dash does not appear in the caption text anywhere. If it does, then you'll need to do a pre- and post- "fiddle" to ensure these em-dashes are not touched by the global replace above.
The "pre-fiddle" is to do a global find/replace across captions, replacing the em-dash ("^+") with some other string (e.g. "EM-DASH") that doesn't ever occur in any caption's text. Then you do the separator change as described above. Finally, the "post-fiddle" is to restore the em-dashes that were in the captions, by doing a global replace of the string "EM-DASH" with the actual em-dash character "^+".