Taming wildcards: Harnessing the full power of MS Word’s Find and Replace function
Taming wildcards: Harnessing the full power of MS Word’s Find and Replace function
Have you heard people talking about a ‘wildcard search’ or even attempted one yourself? This PEG webinar will teach you how to carry out advanced Find and Replace (F&R) operations that will save you time and improve your accuracy.
This is the first of three webinars on MS Word being offered in the first half of this year. The other dates and topics are:
- Tuesday, 18 February (18:00) – Productivity tips for MS Word: Keyboard shortcuts, the QAT and custom ribbons, and a demo of some basic macros
- Saturday, 5 April 2025 (09:00) – What’s up TOC? Diagnosing and mastering automated tables of contents and lists of figures and tables in MS Word
We are therefore offering a special discount to curious Word users who wish to attend more than one webinar in this ‘bundle’. See the special pricing below.
Date: Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Time: 18:00–20:00
Place: Online (Zoom meeting)
Facilitator: Kevin Walker
Level: Intermediate
CPD hours: PEG members will earn CPD hours according to the criteria published on the PEG website. Attendees of the live
presentation will receive a certificate confirming their attendance and the duration of the webinar. Those who are
unable to attend the webinar live may submit their receipt as proof of having received the recording.
Prerequisites/foundational knowledge: Some basic knowledge of F&R in Word. An open mind and a willingness to wrap your head around some basic computer ‘codes’.
Pre-webinar materials: None.
About our facilitator
Kevin Walker started his long and happy relationship with the Microsoft Office suite during a ‘misspent youth’, messing about on the family computer while his friends were probably playing outside in the sunshine. Most of his MS Word learning has been guided by curiosity (‘What does this button do?!’), the belief that ‘there must be a (better) way to do that’, lots of Googling, and the subsequent joy in finding solutions to and workarounds for tricky issues. He is passionate about sharing these skills with others and helping them to resolve their own prickly problems.
About the webinar
MS Word’s F&R function can do so much more than find just simple text strings. It can find text with specific formatting and even apply formatting to ‘found’ text.
Wildcards are special text placeholders that search for patterns, not specific text, so you can use them to account for ANY likely scenario in your text. The ‘replace’ part of the function can add, delete and even transpose snippets of text. If you are curious about what is possible, then this is the webinar for you!
Kevin will show you how to work with the advanced options of Word’s F&R dialog, including wildcards, and demonstrate cases in which these functions might be useful.
For example, we could search for [any number followed by a letter], if we wanted to ensure that all units were spaced. The search would turn up ‘4mm’, ‘6MB’, ‘12L’ and so forth.
By using the appropriate ‘Replace’ function, you can make bulk changes efficiently to ensure accuracy and consistency across your document. In our example above, you could easily add a (nonbreaking) space between the numbers and their units: ‘4 mm’, ‘6 MB’, ‘12 L’, etc.
Or say you’ve been sent a document with dates in US format. You could swap the month and day using a simple wildcard F&R.
You may wish to use wildcard F&R to highlight any group of four digits starting with 19xx or 20xx (most probably a year).
The possibilities are endless.
Cost
| Affiliation | Early-bird registration fee (one webinar)1 | Full registration fee (one webinar)2 | Early-bird registration fee (two webinars)3 | Early-bird registration fee (three webinars)4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PEG members | R295 | R380 | R500 | R700 |
| Members of affiliated organisations5 | R495 | R580 | R840 | R1175 |
| Non-affiliated members | R695 | R780 | R1180 | R1600 |
1Early-bird registration fee: Before or on Monday, 3 February
2Between Tuesday, 4 February, and Saturday, 8 February
3Should you register and pay for TWO MS WORD webinars in advance in one transaction before the early-bird deadline of the first webinar you wish to attend, you will qualify for a discount on the total package: For example, instead of 2 × R295 = R590, PEG members receive a discount of R90. The total cost for the two webinars, paid for simultaneously, will therefore be R500. (This will apply if you wish to register for only the 18 February and 5 April webinars.)
4Should you register and pay for all THREE MS WORD webinars in advance in one transaction before the early-bird deadline of the first webinar, you will qualify for a discount on the total package: For example, instead of 3 × R295 = R885, PEG members receive a discount of R185. The total cost for the three webinars, paid for simultaneously, will therefore be R700.
5Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers (ASAIB), Professional
Journalists’ Association of South Africa (ProJourn), Southern African Freelancers’ Association (SAFREA), South
African Science Journalists’ Association (SASJA), the South African Translators’ Institute (SATI), Publishers’
Association of South Africa (PASA), Society of English-language professionals in the Netherlands (SENSE), Institute
of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd), Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), Editorial
Freelancers Association (EFA) and Nordic Editors and Translators (NEaT).
NOTE: The package discounts apply only to PEG members and only to an early-bird registration for the MS WORD webinars.
Take advantage of the early-bird special: save money and secure your spot at this webinar by registering
early!
Please register by completing and emailing the registration form.
Deadline for registrations: 12:00 on Saturday, 8 February.