Substitution Parameters Help Page
Please refer to the table below for parameter explanation. The parameters are listed in the order of the columns on the text substitutions screen.
Use the appropriate check boxes (see description below) to narrow down your search.
| Parameter | Notes |
|---|---|
| Del | Click the “X” button to delete the line. |
| Text To Find | Put in the text you want to find in the office and text documents you have selected in steps 1 and 2. If WildCard or Regular Expressions is selected in the OPT menu next to it, please enter the wild card pattern or regular expression to use to find the text. The text can be up to 4000 characters long. |
| F (formatting) | There is a small button next to the Text To Find field labeled “F”. This allows you to select find operations on words formatted a certain way. For example, if you want to find a specific word but ONLY if it is underlined, you can set this parameter here. Please refer to more help on this here: Find text formatted a specific way |
| OPT | The OPT (option) menu next to Text To Find allows you to select options for the text. When you select “Regular Expressions” from the drop down list, the program will treat Text To Find as a Regular Expression. Note that it will color code Text To Find in Green. If you select “WildCard”, Text To Find will be treated as a Wild Card pattern and will be color coded in Yellow. “Special Character” inserts a special character into the text. See Text Options. |
| Text To Replace | Enter the text you want to substitute. The text can be up to 4000 characters long. |
| F (formatting) | The small “F” button next to the Text To Replace field allows you to apply formatting (italics, underline, bold, strike thru, etc.) after the text is replaced. Please refer to more help on this here: Apply Formatting After Replacement |
| OPT | The OPT (option) menu next to Text To Replace allows you to select options for the text. When you select “Regular Expressions” from the drop down list, the program will treat Text To Replace as a Regular Expression. Note that it will color code Text To Replace in Green. If you select “WildCard”, Text To Replace will be treated as a Wild Card pattern and will be color coded in Yellow. |
| Body | Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Visio and Text (.csv, .txt). When checked the body is searched for the text to find. |
| Header | Word, PowerPoint and Excel. When checked the header is searched for the text to find. |
| Footer | Word, PowerPoint and Excel. When checked the footer is searched for the text to find. Please note that in Power Point footer appears in the slides and there is a separate footer section in the notes. For PowerPoint this setting affects both. |
| Notes (ppt) | Power Point only. When checked, Power Point notes are searched for the text to find. |
| Hyper Links | Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Visio. When checked, any hyperlinks defined in the office document are searched. If a line has Hyper Links checked and Body unchecked, the main document text is not searched for that line; the program warns you about this when you save. If the option “Update template name (Word) & External Links (Excel) when hyperlinks are updated” is turned on in the Advanced Settings, a line with Hyper Links checked will also apply the find replace operation to the template name stored inside the Word document. See help section on Advanced Settings. |
| Ignore Case | When checked, the upper and lower case of the text you are searching in your documents is ignored (X = x). |
| EndNote (word) | Word only. When checked end notes are searched for the text to find. |
| Whole Word | When checked, the text to find is treated as an entire word, and not part of a word. There is a special set of characters that is used to denote word boundaries. By default these characters are: +=-() /'<>?^&%$#@!;.:,[] and the non-breaking space.You can change these to suit your language in “Word Boundary Identifiers” in the “Advanced Settings” screen. |
| Entire Cell | Excel only. When checked, entire cell must match the text to find value to be substituted. |
| Excel Formla | Perform a find replace operation on the Excel formulas. |
| File Name | The find replace operation is applied to the final file name. This action is performed AFTER all substitutions are done during final file operation. Rename the result file name by performing / applying the replace operation on the file name itself. You can use regular expressions to add a prefix or a suffix to the file name. See “Adding a prefix or a suffix to a file name” below. |
| Follow Case | A special action is performed after a substitution has been found. This option allows for trying to match the case (Upper and Lower) of the original text. Please take a look at the examples below. |
A new line starts with Body, Header, Footer, Notes (ppt), Hyper Links, Ignore Case and EndNote (word) checked, and the other check boxes unchecked.
Some check boxes exclude each other on the same line:
- Whole Word and Hyper Links: checking one unchecks the other.
- Entire Cell and Excel Formla: checking one unchecks the other.
Follow Case examples
| Original Text | Replace with | Final Result | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| ORG TEXT | new text | NEW TEXT | Upper case |
| Org Text | new text | New Text | First letters in caps |
| Org text | new text | New text | First letter in caps |
| org text | NEW TEXT | new text | Converted to lower case |
Wild cards and regular expressions
- When you select WildCard or Regular Expressions, the options for Whole Word, Entire Cell and Ignore Case will be grayed out as they do not apply to regular expressions. Whole Word is also turned off.
- When you select WildCard or Regular Expressions for Text To Replace and Text To Find of that line is still plain text, the same option will be turned on for Text To Find – they work together in tandem (linked).
- Follow Case is grayed out and turned off when WildCard or Regular Expressions is turned on for Text To Replace.
- If a Regular Expression or WildCard search pattern is entered incorrectly, the corresponding text field will be color coded in Pink.
- Read more about Regular Expressions here.
- Read more about Wild Cards here.
Line breaks and paragraphs
- If you need to insert a line break or carriage return, you can add the following character pattern in the Text To Replace field:
{{/n}} - If you need to insert a paragraph, you can add the following character pattern in the Text To Replace field:
{{/p}}. This pattern will insert a paragraph break. This option is for Word only. This option does not apply to hyperlinks.
Adding a prefix or a suffix to a file name
You can add a prefix or a suffix to a file name using regular expressions. Check File Name on the line and select Regular Expressions for both the Text To Find and Text To Replace fields.
- In Text To Find use:
^.*$ - In Text To Replace use:
prefix$0to add a prefix, or$0suffixto add a suffix.
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