To type a backslash, you can type:
& # 9 2 ; (with no spaces in between)

Thanks so much. That will save me hours of work.

<(?<!()d+?(?=[ul"(])

Basically, that’s doing this:

Any one or more digits at the beginning of a word, only if it is not preceded by an opening parenthesis and only if it is followed by either an upper- or lower-case character, quotation mark or opening parenthesis.

Those are the criteria you stated in your last post. I tested it on the one sample paragraph in your original post and it worked (but then again, so did my last test).

Let us know how that works.

IMPORTANT: I’m seeing a problem in how the blog is presenting these little bits of code. It’s not displaying some very crucial backslashes that need to be included before certain characters. I will e-mail you the GREP pattern since it can’t be represented accurately here.

If for example the reference were (Ex 24:12), it would find the first 2 in 24.

It is also finding digits in the middle of the verses when they happen to have numbers in them. I am afraid those may be really hard to get rid of, but do you think it is possible to take advantage of the fact that there is never any white space between the verse numbers and the next character (usually a letter, quotation mark, or open parenthesis)?

If I understand Walton’s question correctly, I think what he’s looking for is to superscript those numbers at the start of the verses, but not format any of the references to the verses in parentheses.

This requires a little more complex search. Using your sample paragraph, Walton, the “idea” of what you’re looking for is this:

Any one or more digits at the beginning of a word, but only if those digits are not preceded by an opening parenthesis, upper- or lower-case character, colon or dash and only if they’re not followed by a closing parenthesis, colon or dash.

To do that, you need to use the Negative Lookbehind (only if it’s not preceded by…) and Negative Lookahead (only if it’s not followed by…) expressions.

That search would look like this:

\<(?<!\(|[lu]|:|-)\d+(?!\)|:|-)

As far as the replace function, you actually don’t need to enter anything in the Change To field, as long as you’re definitely applying formatting in the change operation. When a formatting change is attached to a query, the blank Change To field no longer means “replace with nothing” it means “leave the text unchanged, just follow the formatting instructions.”

However, there’s no harm at all using $0 as David suggests, or even $1 (Found Text and Found Text 1, respectively). The result will be the same.

Let me know if it works for you. I tested it on my end and it worked like a charm.

Now you can change the Change Format area to apply the character style or superscript, or whatever.

Please help…

I watched the lynda.com tutorials…and they were great, but they didn’t cover this topic of GREP in enough detail to solve this problem.

Here is an example:

63The Spirit is the one who gives life; human nature is of no help! The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. 64But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus had already known from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) (Jn 6:63-64)

See there are numbers in the text and numbers in the reference at the end. I want the numbers in the text to be superscripted, but not the numbers in the reference.

Is this possible? I can’t figure out how to make exceptions with GREP. Please help!

One argument for not uninstalling it is that, once you do, you can’t re-install an older version when a new version exists on the machine without first uninstalling all of the CS3 apps, then re-installing CS, CS2, and CS3 in that specific order. That’s very time-consuming.