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Selecting Text Options from the drop down menu next to text to find and text to replace text boxes

Every text box in the GOFR program for entering text to find and text to replace has an OPT menu next to it.

OPT (Option) allows selecting what is going to be entered into the corresponding text box.

Currently the menu has the items described below:

  1. Text – This means that the entry in the corresponding find/replace text box will be treated as text without any special consideration. Plain text has a White background.
  2. WildCard – This means that the entry in the corresponding find/replace text box will be treated as a WildCard. By WildCard we mean what the Word program does natively when the user uses find and replace with the WildCard check box marked off. Wild cards in Word are a simple way of finding patterns in the document. They also allow for the transformation of the final result. The WildCards are a nice and simple way to search and replace with patterns. GOFR however recommends using the regular expressions to find patterns; they are far more powerful. Wild Cards are color coded in Yellow.
  3. Regular Expressions – This means that the entry in the corresponding text box is treated as a regular expression. Regular expressions are color coded in Green.
  4. Special Character – This allows you to easily insert a special character into the appropriate text box such as Copyright (©) or Trademark (™) etc. See Special Characters. This item is available on the Text Find & Replace and Document Properties screens.
  5. Help – Opens this help page.

If a WildCard or Regular Expression pattern is entered incorrectly, the text box is color coded in Pink.

If the user selects Regular Expressions (or WildCard) for the text to replace while the text to find is still plain text, the same option will also be turned on for the corresponding text to find. This is because the replacement regular expression does not make sense without a corresponding regular expression pattern.

On the Text Find & Replace screen the header row has its own OPT menus above the two OPT columns. Selecting Text, WildCard or Regular Expressions there applies it to all rows.

Please see discussion in the help section for WildCards

Please see discussion in the help section for Regular Expressions