Find and replace across a whole publication

Late changes are a fact of life with printed things. The venue changes, the price goes up, someone's name was spelt wrong in four places. Find and replace is the tool that saves you from reading every page looking for each one, and in Publish by Zaweba it reaches further than you might expect.

Ctrl+F finds and Ctrl+H replaces. Both search every story, every table cell and every master page, with options for match case and whole words. Replace keeps formatting and never touches fields, and Replace all is one undo step.

Everywhere means everywhere

In a layout, text is spread across lots of separate places: the main stories, little boxes for captions, tables of prices, and headers and footers on master pages. A search that only looked in the current box would be close to useless. Publish looks through all of it, so a club name in the footer of every page, a date in a table and the same date in the body text all turn up in one search.

Master pages are worth a special mention. A wrong phone number in a footer appears on every page that uses that master, but it lives in one place. Find and replace reaches it, and fixing it there fixes every page.

Match case and whole words

Two options keep a search precise. Match case finds only text with the same capitals, so a search for "May" the month does not stop at every "may" in the text. Whole words finds only complete words, so searching for "art" does not stop inside "party" or "start".

Turn these on when you are replacing something short or common. They are the difference between a quick, safe replace all and an afternoon fixing words you never meant to change.

Formatting stays put

When Publish replaces text, the new words keep the formatting of the old ones. A bold, coloured date stays bold and coloured when you change it to a new date. A heading stays in its heading style. You do not have to go back afterwards and restyle each replacement.

Fields are left alone. Page numbers and page counts are fields rather than ordinary text, and replace never touches them, so a search for a number cannot accidentally break the page numbering in your footer.

Replace all without fear

Replace all is one undo step. If a replace all goes wrong, because you forgot whole words or typed the wrong replacement, one undo puts every change back at once. That makes it reasonable to use replace all with confidence, check the result, and step back if needed.

Even so, it is good practice to find before you replace. Run a find first, see how many places the text turns up, and glance at a few of them. If the count is higher than you expected, there may be uses you had not thought of.

Everyday uses

Updating a newsletter for next month is the classic job: the issue number, the month in the footer, the dates of regular events. A menu might need every price of one dish updated, or a supplier's name changed. A set of certificates or tickets might need a year changed throughout. Each is a matter of seconds.

Find also works as a checker. Search for a name to make sure it is spelt the same everywhere, or for a placeholder such as XX that you used while waiting for details, so none slips through to print.

Used with a little care, find and replace in Publish by Zaweba turns a nervous last minute change into a quick, reversible edit.