How to find and replace across a whole document

Press Ctrl+H in Publish by Zaweba and the find and replace searches the whole publication: every story, every table cell and every master page. Type what to find and what to put instead, then replace one at a time or choose Replace all, which counts as a single undo step. Ctrl+F finds without replacing. Publish is free, offline software for Windows.

In a layout app, text is spread across lots of separate boxes, tables and master pages. Searching only the box you happen to be in would miss most of it. Searching everything at once is what makes the tool useful.

Where it looks

Stories are the chains of text that flow through linked text boxes, so a newsletter article spread over three pages is searched as one piece. Table cells are included, which matters on price lists and timetables. Master pages are included too, so a phone number in a footer that appears on every page gets changed once, at the source.

Options that save mistakes

Match case finds only text with the same capitals. Searching for "May" with match case on finds the month and skips the word "may" in ordinary sentences.

Whole words finds only complete words. Searching for "art" with whole words on skips "start", "party" and "article". Turn it on whenever the word you're replacing could hide inside longer words.

Replace keeps formatting. If the old word was bold and red, the new one comes in bold and red. That keeps headings looking like headings after a change.

Fields are never touched. Page numbers, page counts and mail-merge fields stay as fields, so a replace can't break your numbering or your merge.

Replace all, safely

Replace all changes every match in one go, and the whole lot is one undo step. If the result isn't what you wanted, a single Undo puts everything back. Edit > Undo history lists every step if you need to go back further.

A good habit is to run Find first with the same options and step through a few matches. If they're all the ones you meant, Replace all with confidence.

Everyday jobs it handles

A date change. The quiz night moves from the 14th to the 21st; find "14th" and replace with "21st" across the poster, the tickets and the newsletter announcement.

A price rise. Find the old price with whole words on and replace it everywhere it appears, including inside table cells.

A new contact. When the club secretary changes, replace the old name and e-mail address, including on the master page footer.

A spelling fix. A place name spelled two ways across a booklet can be made consistent in one pass.

Where it fits with the rest

Find and replace works hand in hand with styles. If you want to change how something looks across the document, change the paragraph or character style rather than replacing text. If you want to change what it says, find and replace is the tool.

For a wider tidy-up, the optional AI proofread in the AI menu can check spelling and grammar in UK English using your own AI account, with the result for you to accept or not.

Run a quick Find for your organisation's old name or last year's date before printing anything new. It catches the leftovers you'd otherwise only spot after the run.