Find and replace now includes scope and result count

[Ash]

Apps: Publisher
Platforms: All

The find and replace panel in Publisher now includes the ability to limit the scope of the search to document, current spread or page, current story, current selection or current section. Also included is a result count to quickly show the number of instances your search criteria fulfils.

Desktop:

 

For iPad the scope option is available from the Cog button next to the search field:

[anto]

The function seems to not work for me in 2 cases.
1. If you select "Selection" in Scope from the drop-down list, and do not select anything on the page, the function searches anyway.

2. If you select a text frame, the function finds the word in it. But if you click inside the frame and then immediately click the Move Tool button and search again, you won't get any results, even if the frame is still selected.

 

[Pauls]

For point 2 when the frame is selected I would expect the search to work as the selection is the text frame. Clicking inside moves the selection to be inside the text frame and in this case there are no characters selected.

[MikeTO]

This is great, thanks!

[Intuos5]

Could this be expanded to Designer, so you get the option to filter for artboards there as well?

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

Could this be expanded to Designer, so you get the option to filter for artboards there as well?

Find and Replace doesn't exist in Designer at all. But it might be nice to include an Artboard option in this new scoping function, along with Spread, for the cases where you're working on a document that has Artboards rather than Spreads.

[MikeTO]

This enhancement works very well, thanks.

It would be nice if Publisher could:

• change search scope automatically to Selection from Document, Spread, or Story if a range of text is selected, rather than deselecting the range and finding the next result in the document, spread, or story
• change scope automatically to Document from Selection if no range of text is selected, rather than finding no results

Thanks

[garrettm30]

This is a welcome change. One minor point: is there any reason why one can’t select the scope before search parameters are entered? If the search field is empty, and no find by format is select, then the scope drop down is disabled, retaining its previous selection. It just seems arbitrary, because scope, while a very welcome addition, is also a common point of user error where we forget to set it to the correct scope for a given search. So imagine this scenario that sounds like just the kind of thing I would do:

1. Begin a new search.
2. Notice that scope is still left at a previous setting that is not fitting for the current task. Normally I would wish to change it when I notice it, but I cannot do so with an empty search string.
3. So, I start working on the search string. Often it is regex, so my mind is fully occupied in working out the desired regex, maybe even hopping back and forth with some tool such as my beloved regex101.com.
4. My mind has moved away from the question of scope, as I have forgotten to come back and change scope.

I run the find (and maybe replace), and the results weren’t what I expected. It is not an end-of-the-world scenario, because often I would notice, fix scope, and run again. Occasionally I might miss it, with consequences showing up only later when my scope was larger than I thought, or things not fixed that I thought I had fixed because the scope was narrower than I intended.

The point is that I would like to be able to set scope as soon as it crosses my mind, because I cannot be sure that it will cross my mind again until it is too late.

[walt.farrell]

47 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

One minor point: is there any reason why one can’t select the scope before search parameters are entered? If the search field is empty, and no find by format is select, then the scope drop down is disabled,

Works OK on Windows.

[garrettm30]

43 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Works OK on Windows.

That’s good to know. Maybe then it is nothing more than a simple bug. This is what I see on Mac:

And it is not just the look: indeed the scope cannot be changed in that state.

[000]

I am having issues with find and replace of mor than 9.000 results of "<>" in my document.

Publisher stops responding when clicking "replace all".

Replacing them one-by-one works, so I'll manually replace a few hundred and try to find out where the line is where it crashes. Bit annoying, though ...

9300 results -> stops responding, needs restart
6800 results -> stops responding, needs restart
5000 results -> stops responding, needs restart
2500 results -> stops responding, needs restart

Cutoff point seems to be somewhere about 1.500 results.

[Hangman]

Hi @Jens Krebs,

I'm not seeing any immediate issue testing with around 85,000 instances of "<>" though I appreciate the instances of "<>" you have will be spread throughout a more complex document. What is the total word count and number of pages for the document in question...

 

[000]

It's about 160 pages with about 60 different text styles and about 150 images.

The "<>" that needs removing are leftovers from HTML commands that are spread throughout the text.

As I haven't had any find-replace issues in the version 2.0 and 2.1 and fewer find-replace commands in 2.2 have worked fine, I'll update the post above as soon as I have found the cutoff point when it stops working.

I remember InDesign having something similar a few years ago, find-replace stopped working in texts with more than 10.000 characters and it messed up the ,replace' part by adding the numer "1" to the replaced text after the limit was reached. Fun times. 🙂

Update:
Cutoff point seems to be somewhere about 1.500 results.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Jens Krebs said:

As I haven't had any find-replace issues in the version 2.0 and 2.1 and fewer find-replace commands in 2.2 have worked fine, I'll update the post above as soon as I have found the cutoff point when it stops working.

Are you saying this is only an issue in 2.2, and this works fine with your file in 2.0 and 2.1? If so, can you share the file?

[000]

That is what I’m saying, but I cannot share the file.

[Old Bruce]

On occasion if I have Story selected for the Scope I will have as a result absolutely everything is found. I noticed this when searching for text that is italicized. I used the Regex (.+) for the search string and Format Italic on.

[walt.farrell]

20 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

On occasion if I have Story selected for the Scope I will have as a result absolutely everything is found. I noticed this when searching for text that is italicized. I used the Regex (.+) for the search string and Format Italic on.

It reproduces easily for me. Sample document and video attached. Before the video, I created italic words in the expanded Filler Text by selecting some random words and clicking the "I" button in the Context Toolbar. The Document and Spread scopes for the Find work fine, but Story finds the complete text of every paragraph.

 

 

find-italic-bug.afpub

[Hangman]

4 minutes ago, Seneca said:

I've just tested your file on MacOSX with the latest Publisher Beta (1903) and I can't reproduce it.

Likewise, I see the following on macOS:

Walt | Mac

Doc - 6 | 18
Spread - 2 | 7
Story - 108 | 18
Selection - n/a | 18

[Seneca]

2 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Likewise, I see the following on macOS:

Apologies for hiding my earlier post @Hangman.

I reran the test with the Find Field: (.)+ and then I got the same results as Walt.

One might argue that we don't need anything in the Find Field to find all occurrences of italics.

It seems that the Find Field trumps any additional specs included in the Format Dialog which might be a bug. 

[Hangman]

10 minutes ago, Seneca said:

I reran the test with the Find Field: (.)+ and then I got the same results as Walt.

Strange, I've tried it with (.+) and (.)+ and I get the same results. i.e., neither of which matches @walt.farrell's 🤔

10 minutes ago, Seneca said:

It seems that the Find Field trumps any additional specs included in the Format Dialog which might be a bug.

I think this has been raised before though I'm unsure if it's been logged as a bug...

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Strange, I've tried it with (.+) and (.)+ and I get the same results. i.e., neither of which match @walt.farrell's 🤔

And @Old Bruce also seems to be on Mac, and got results like I got on Windows.

[Hangman]

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

And @Old Bruce also seems to be on Mac, and got results like I got on Windows.

Curiouser and curiouser thought Alice...

A bit of a long shot but I think @Old Bruce is on Big Sur, I'm on Monterey and @Seneca is on Ventura but I'd be amazed if that is a factor...

[MikeTO]

It might be helpful to sue a simpler test doc.

This is what I'm seeing on macOS [edit] when searching for a word in italics [/edit]:

• For a story with a single frame, choosing Story will find just the result in that frame.
• For a story with two linked frames, choosing Story will find two copies of each result in that story.
• For a story with three linked frames, choosing Story will find four copies of each result in that story.

story.afpub

 

[Hangman]

Um, that's not what I'm seeing... 🤔

• For a story with a single frame, choosing Story will find just the result in that frame.
• For a story with two linked frames, choosing Story will find one copy of each result in that story.
• For a story with three linked frames, choosing Story will find one copy of each result in that story.

Edit: Ignore this screen recording and the comments above - user error!

[MikeTO]

@Hangman I think you accidentally chose Italic for Replace and not Find