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Find and replace text

 

You can use Find to quickly locate words or phrases in a source or node, including word or phases in annotations.

If you want to edit the content of a source, you can use Find and Replace to locate specific text and automatically replace it with new text—you can also find and replace text formatted in a specific heading style.

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Find text

While you are working with a source or node in Detail View, you can search for specific text.

  1. In Detail View, place the cursor in a source or node.  

  2. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find.

Keyboard Shortcut To display the Find Content dialog box, press CTRL+F.

The Find Content dialog box is displayed.

  1. Under Find What, in the Text box, enter the text you want to search for. Click the Special button, if you want to include special characters such as paragraph marks and tabs.

  1. Under Find Options you specify the following options:

  • Look in  You can search in text, in annotations or both.

  • Search  You can search the entire content, or search up or down from your current position.

  • Match case  Search for an exact combination of upper and lower case letters.

  • Find whole word  Find the complete word that you entered in the Text box. For example, if you search for stick the words tick and sticky will not be found.

  • Match entire cell contents  Find the text you entered in the Text box, only when it matches the entire content of a dataset cell.

  • Find within selected column  Search for the text in the currently selected dataset column.

  1. Click Find Next.

NOTE

  • In documents, memos and externals, you can find occurrences of text in a specific paragraph style—select the style from the Style list. You can also find a specific paragraph style—leave the Text box empty and select a style from the Style list.

  • When you apply a filter to a column in a dataset, transcript or picture log, records are hidden—only text in visible records will be found.

  • If you want to search for specific text in multiple sources, refer to Run a Text Search query.

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Find and replace text

You can automatically replace a word or phrase with another—for example, you can replace sunset with dusk.

  1. Make sure you are in edit mode.

  2. Click in the source.

  3. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Replace.

The Replace Content dialog box is displayed.

  1. Under Find What, in the Text box, enter the text you want to search for.

  2. Under Replace With, in the Text box, enter the replacement text.

  1. Under Find Options, you specify the following options::

  • Look in  You can search in text, in annotations or both.

  • Search  You can search the entire content, or search up or down from your current position.

  • Match case  Search for an exact combination of upper and lower case letters.

  • Find whole word  Find the complete word that you entered in the Text box. For example, if you search for stick the words tick and sticky will not be found.

  • Match entire cell contents  Find the text you entered in the Text box, only when it matches the entire content of a dataset cell.

  • Find within selected column  Search for the text in the currently selected dataset column.

  1. Click Find Next.

  2. Click Replace.

NOTE

  • To replace all occurrences of the text, click Replace All.

  • In PDF and dataset sources, you can replace text in annotations, but text within the source cannot be changed in NVivo.

  • You do not need to enter edit mode, if you want to change the text in annotations only.

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Find and replace paragraph styles

While working with documents, memos and externals, you can search for and replace paragraph styles. For example, you could find all text formatted as Heading 1 and change it to Normal.

  1. Make sure you are in edit mode.

  2. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Replace.

The  Replace Content dialog box is displayed.

  1. Under Find What, in the Style list, select the paragraph style you want to search for.

  2. Under Replace With, in the Style list, select the replacement style.

  3. Under Find Options, you can choose to search

  • In text—annotations do not have styles

  • All of the source or up or down from the current cursor position.

  1. Click Find Next.

  2. Click Replace.

NOTE To replace all occurrences of the paragraph style, click Replace All.

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Using special characters

You can use special characters when searching for text in a source or node. For example, the symbols ^$ can be used to replace any letter—s^$t  would find sat and set. To access the list of special characters, click the Special button next to the text you are searching for.

To find Symbol Description
A paragraph mark ^p Although you cannot see paragraph marks in NVivo sources—you can find the beginning of a new paragraph using this symbol.
Tab character ^t Although you cannot see tab characters in NVivo sources—you can find locations where a tab has been inserted.
Any character ^? Find any single character—for example, 1^?10 will find 1:10 and 1/10.
Any digit ^# Find any single digit—for example, 2^# will find 21, 22, 23 and so on.
Any letter ^$ Find any single letter—for example F^$n will find fun, fan and fin.
Caret character ^^ Finds the caret character.
Ellipsis character ^| Finds occurrences of the ellipsis( ...).
White space ^w Finds all occurrences of white space—for example, the space between two words.

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