I'd like to see better Find&Replace in all LO programs. It's rather general description, so I'll add that this should include the current functionality of Alternative Find & Replace extension, which doesn't seem to be maintained, and is only available for Writer. Regular expressions should be included. Alternative Find & Replace seems also to solve an issue that Find and Replace doesn't take case of original word in to account, http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17188, with an option Preserve capitalisation.
If it's not a duplicate, I'd like to put this on http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Vote_for_Enhancement.
[This is an automated message.] This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases. Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1 more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html
1. Alternative Find & Replace extension was available from http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/AltSearch but it's not maintained and it doesn't work anymore. The is one of the most important extensions to transfer to LO. 2. The same issue that Find and Replace doesn't take case of original word into account is now on a new address: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=17188. For example: if you search case-insensitive for "he" and want to replace with "she", all the instances of "he" which are written as "He" will be replaced by "she" instead of "She". The priority of this issue should be raised. It is an issue that cripples the use of global search/replace. I changed this issue to "major" because of this.
This is an Enhancement Request
Although I track annoying bugs and see that there are other more important but sometimes also not so critical issues, this one is very important to me.
Just to show that Timur is not the only user interested in this enhancement request, I would like to state that this issue is very important for me, too ... Why? An example. Some months ago, I had to typeset a proceedings volume (a 'Sammelband' in German). I would have used LaTeX for this job, but for some external reasons I had to use a word processor; so I used Writer. In the long process of making uniform all chapters (regarding spelling/orthography, interpunctation, abbreviations, citation, formatting etc.), the present Regular Expressions feature of the Find & Replace function was very very helpful for me. Thanks for it! But some special issues were not handled by the Regular Expressions feature as it stands; in some cases I remember I had to open the ODT file with BBEdit in order to search with advanced Regular Expressions for some remaining issues, and then to fix every occurence in Writer manually. If Writer's Regular Expressions feature was better, I could have just used Find & Replace to fix these errors ... This would have saved me some hours of work.
(In reply to comment #4) > This is an Enhancement Request I agree. But having been used to the intuitiveness on commercial products (Word, WordPro), I get a feel like it's a bug. :-)
I edited https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office#Word_processors:_LibreOffice_Writer_vs._Microsoft_Word in order to add Advanced find & replace / Special characters. I marked this as partially supported in Writer and fully supported in Word.
Maybe now that there is Sidebar from Symphony, Find & Replace could be inserted in it? This way it would be unobtrusive while searching/replacing; the good use of sidebar consisting in not covering/hovering over the main text body (an irk in MS Word). Ale the options from Alternative F & R transferred to the new functionality. It would be a huge project, but rewarding. Thank you.
Extension http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/alternative-dialog-find-replace-for-writer still works. At least it could be bundled with the LO. I agree that Find & Replace could be inserted in the Sidebar, as the 5th tab.
*** Bug 95708 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bump. This bugz me, and always has, that LO, & OO before it, don't have the complex Find & Replace features that are so much better handled in M$ Office. The features of good F&R are pretty much crucial to my effective processing of documents, so I'd like to see this given fairly high priority. F&R is a real 'guts' issue that underpins the bells and whistles stuff. AltSearch 1.4.1 is available but is buggy, not able to complete some of the features that it has and really quite broken on some installations (I tried to install it on a friend's Mac on OO - presume that LO is the same). I'm not a coder, but very willing to help test this. Anyone?
Heiko, can you please look at this one and note whether it make sense to stay open? I noticed some talk on Find&Replace in GSoC, if I'm right. Is Bug 100672 a duplicate? Looks so to me, but I may be biased. Please look at the duplicates here.
(In reply to Timur from comment #13) > Heiko, can you please look at this one and note whether it make sense to > stay open? I noticed some talk on Find&Replace in GSoC, if I'm right. > Is Bug 100672 a duplicate? Looks so to me, but I may be biased. > Please look at the duplicates here. I understand this ticket as RegEx in F&R and 100672 as to add something special on top of it. F&R (as well as the findbar) in the current implementation is the opposite to usability and we should think about a new UI. If you would do the implementation I'd be happy to do the design engineering.
*** Bug 119728 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 119924 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Changing priority back to 'medium' since the number of duplicates is lower than 5
*** Bug 129187 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 139585 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #14) > (In reply to Timur from comment #13) > > ... > > I understand this ticket as RegEx in F&R and 100672 as to add something > special on top of it. > > F&R (as well as the findbar) in the current implementation is the opposite > to usability and we should think about a new UI. If you would do the > implementation I'd be happy to do the design engineering. Looking through all the related duplicates, I see that Search&Replace is an issue for almost ten years. There is an ancestor bug report from 2003 in AOO! Since writing regexes is not very easy, don't forget to make something like the "batch" feature (store and re-apply stored regexes, being able to give them reasonable names) is not forgotten!
