MS Word: finding upper/lower case characters using wildcards

Factual Questions
1

Hi folks,
I have a document to edit that is somewhat acronym heavy. To increase readability, I want to insert a table of acronyms. To help make this table, I’d like to highlight all of the acronyms in the document before beginning. I thought it would be easy—Word can match case when finding and replacing. But… but how to do so when using wildcards (i.e., ^$)?
Thanks,

Rhythm

2

Does this help?

3

Thanks for the link. I’d tried finding things via Google, but nothing directly worked. The links to the wildcard commands got me thinking again, and I was able to figure something out. It was a bit cumbersome in the end, but within ten minutes I have something to work with. Thanks.

With “using wildcards” checked:
[ul]
[li]Remove all initial capitals in sentences[/ul][/li][ul][list][li]Find:* [A-Z][a-z]* (note: I don’t know how to code it here, but there is a leading space before the first bracket)[/ul][/list][/li][ul][list][list][li]Replace with:space[/ul][/list][/list][/li]
[ul][li]Remove all initial capitals in sentences beginning a paragraph[/ul][/li][ul][list]
[li]Find:^13[A-Z][a-z] (note:"^13" must be used instead of ^p)[/ul][/li][/list]
[ul][list][list][li]Replace with:space[/ul][/list][/list][/li]
[ul][li]remove all remaining lower case text[/ul][/li][ul][list][li]Find:[a-z][/ul][/list][/li][ul][list][list][li]Replace with:space[/ul][/list][/list][/li]
[ul][li]clean remaining text by find/replace white space, numbers, extra paragraph marks, and punctuation[/li][/ul]

This gave me a relatively clean document, one that I was able to quickly go through and delete obvious over-inclusions.

4

Much simpler solution.

To do exactly what you requested, that is, highlight acronyms, select Edit, Replace from the menu. In the “Find what” box type

(<[A-Z][A-Z]@>)

In the “Replace with” box, type

\1

While your cursor is still in the Replace with box, select the Format button. Select Font, and then select how you want the font for acronyms to be changed (bold, italics, red, whatever).

Then hit Replace All. All of the matching words (any whole word that is all caps) will be changed to your designated format.

To create a close approximation to a list of acronyms, in the “Find what” box put

(<[! ][a-z0-9]@>)

and in the “Replace with” box, click on Special and select “Paragraph mark.” This will leave some punctuation but may be easier than what you did.

Of course, if this is a one-time task, you’re already done.

5

Thanks CwG-I thought there had be a more elegant way of doing this!

A one time thing now, but it will likely come up again, so again, thanks for the solution.

Rhythm

6

I have got to say that I wish Microsoft would just give it up and support regular expressions in their wildcard searches. It’s close but not quite close enough. I think I could do this more elegantly with a single regexp substitution (though I haven’t actually tried yet).