Find/Replace in a book file

Learn / Forums / General InDesign Topics / Find/Replace in a book file

Viewing 10 reply threads
  • Author
    Posts
    • #72853
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      I have a indb file made up of 14 indd files.
      It just came back from the proofreader with 4119 changes. (yes, that’s right. 4-1-1-9)
      Many can be taken care of with a global replace. Is there a way to search and replace across all the files in the indb file?
      When I selected “all documents” it only picked up the changes in the file I was working on, even though all the files were open.
      Any ideas?

      TIA!

    • #72854
      Tom Venetia
      Member

      Hello Rivkah,
      I work with books and do not use ID’s book assembling feature. I compose each chapter in separate, but then I consolidate all chapters in one single ID file. This has several advantages when it comes to revision and correction. One is that if a certain repeated word or even a phrase has to be corrected it is very easy to do it. The same goes for consolidating objects, paragraph and character styles, or for that effect, anything that can be searched and replaced with GREP strings. Ditto for exporting a PDF file for printing. I strongly recommend this method of producing books.
      Regards
      Tom

    • #72855
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Rivkah: If you choose All Documents then yes, it should find and replace across all OPEN documents. It is very strange that it did not, and I suggest exploring why that is. Note that sometimes you will choose All Documents and then it will change to just “Document” or “Selection” after you search, so you have to change it back.

    • #72856
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      @Tom: They are very heavy files with large images, so although I totally hear what you are saying, I felt it was preferable to have them in separate files.

      @David: That must have been the case. Although I had tried 2x, I just tried again now and its working. So – yay!

      Thanks!

    • #72903
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      Another question:

      I need to replace “lb” with “lb.”. The abbreviation appears both ways in the book and they need to be uniform.
      When I search and select “whole word”, it gives me all of the “lb”s – with and without the period. So if I do a global change, I’ll end up with some as lb.. (2 periods)
      How can I do this?

    • #72904
      Masood Ahmad
      Participant

      How about doing this by GREP Find/Change:

      Find what: lb(?!\.)
      Change to: lb.

      This way it will not search for the “lb”s with a period.

    • #72919
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      Perfect. Thank you, Masood!

    • #72921
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      OK… here’s another question :)
      Sometimes I have something to change and I copy it and paste it into the find field of find/change.
      I get a message “cannot find match”. If its copied and pasted from the ID file – how can that be?
      One example would be double spaces. I changed them to single spaces and then found there were dozens more. So I copied and pasted a double space and ID can’t find any. I’m staring at 4 instances on this page.
      Any ideas?
      Thanks so much!

      • #72922
        David Blatner
        Keymaster

        Rivkah: That is almost always because the scope got changed (the Search pop-up menu in the Find/Change dialog box). Often it will change from Document to Selection, for example.

    • #72931
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      I rechecked – that is not the case here. The search setting is on “all documents”.
      No only that, but I tried now with a single space just to see what would happen and it only picks up some of them. In “show hidden characters” there is either a single or double blue dot between each word – like a space. But the Find can’t seem to find them!
      Help!

      • #72936
        David Blatner
        Keymaster

        Interesting. I have seen that happen and usually it means something has gone wrong and you need to rebuild your InDesign preferences:

        FAQ


        Or perhaps some other button has been clicked in the Find/Change dialog box that is limiting the scope.

    • #72938
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      Well I’ll be. It was the “whole word” option.
      It works now, but can you explain why that would make a difference to spaces?

      • #72939
        David Blatner
        Keymaster

        Ah! Of course. Makes sense. A space is always “outside of a word” so whole word would never be able to find spaces.

    • #72943
      Rivkah Lewis
      Member

      Sometimes the solution is so simple :)
      Thanks for your help (I’ll probably be back for more…)

Viewing 10 reply threads
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
>
Notice: We use cookies on our websites to give you a great online experience. If you keep browsing, we'll assume you're ok with this. For more information, see our privacy policy. By closing this banner, you agree to the use of cookies.I AGREENo