Wildcard Find and Replace

The wildcard engine used in this check is Word's wildcard search and replace system.

The available wildcards and special characters are therefore identical to Word’s own search options.

This example helps to demonstrate the functionality of the markup:

To find the pattern ,𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 and replace with , 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳

search for (,)([0-9A-Za-z]) and replace with \1 \2

As with Word’s find and replace engine, the placeholders \1 and \2 refer to the terms in parentheses, with \1 being the first set of parentheses, \2 being the second and so forth.

For instructions on how to set preferences for this check, see Working with PerfectIt Style Sheets: Wildcards.

If looking for the pattern ‘tracker’ in the text ‘traBBBcker’ (where ‘BBB‘ is tracked text that has been deleted), this will not be found by Wildcard Find and Replace.

This is true of all wildcard searches for tracked changes within Word. Possible workarounds to consider include accepting tracked changes before running PerfectIt, or using one of PerfectIt’s other checks that does not make use of Word’s wildcard engine.

It is possible to search for footnotes using the ^2 code used in Word. However, PerfectIt will not allow fixes of any locations that include footnotes. These should be corrected manually.

Results from this check appear in PerfectIt’s standard reports. However, there is the option to include additional information for this check.

The Wildcards tab of the Style Sheet Editor contains a Wildcard Descriptions column that can be used to describe wildcard patterns.

This makes it easier for users who are not familiar with wildcard patterns to understand the results in reports.