Find and Replace

The Find and Replace view, enabled from the View tab, allows you to search, display results, and replace existing text, string, and property values. This is useful for making changes to multiple graphics that share related information, for example, changing substitutions and data point references in the Sample Graphics folder.

Search Options

The Find and Replace view allows you to search and replace data or values. A search is automatically conducted as you enter text, strings, wildcards, or expressions. If the search entry is found, the Replace, Replace All, and Find Next fields are enabled. You can also use the property toolbox, to insert specific property values for non-textual property types, such as Brushes, Colors or Enumerations.

You can also select where you would like the search to be conducted. You can select the active graphic, all open graphics in the Graphics Editor, or you can specify the entire project. In the case of searching the entire project, the Find Results Controls section displays, allowing you to see the status of a search. A Refresh button is also available in this section.

The standard Match case and Match whole word search filters are also supported.

Text, Wildcards, and Regular Expressions

Text, values, or strings entered into the Find what field can be recognized as

straightforward data
containing wildcards or
regular expressions

making your search more targeted.

The Text option searches for the text or string exactly as entered into the field, without any wildcards. For example, b* matches ab*123 but does not match ab and abcde. Compare this example, with the example for wildcards.

The two wildcard characters available are:

? - Allows you to add one character to your search. For example, ab? matches and displays abc but does not match or display ab and "abcde".
* - Allows you to add zero or more characters to your search criteria. For example, b* matches and displays, b, bc, bcd and bcde.

When you select the Regular Expression option, the text and any symbols entered in the Find what field are recognized regular expressions.
NOTE: The option Match whole word will be ignored.

Example 1: [12]00 matches 100, 200 and 77100777.
Example 2: ^a.*z$ matches strings of any length, which start with an a and end with a z.

Bring to View

When you perform a search or a search and replace, any matching results are displayed in the Find Results section of the view. To work with a specific result, by double-clicking on the associated row the element is brought to view by first opening the associated graphic, if it is not already open, and then making the element active on the canvas, the Element Tree, Properties or Evaluation Editor view, depending on whether it is an expression, substitution, or an element.

Replace Options in the Find Results

Once you have conducted a search and the results are displayed in the Find Results section of the view, you have several options for working with results. You can choose to go item by item, by clicking the Find Next button or you can directly double-click an item in the Find Result list. Or, you can conduct a Replace or Replace All task. You can replace one match at a time, or you can use the standard, Replace All option. The replacement is done only once per item. An item can either stay or disappear after a replace.

Symbols and Symbol Instances Find Results

Since symbol instances are linked to symbols, a symbol instance cannot be modified directly. The Find Results view displays all children symbol instances as grayed-out and italicized, but, the associated element name displays the symbols path.

For example, Element “Sym2\Sym1\Ellipse” means that the symbol, named Sym1 contains the ellipse, and that the symbol named “Sym2” contains an instance of Sym1 and the actual graphic contains an instance of Sym2.

The Find Next button selects the symbol instance of the graphic (“Sym2” in the example), but, the actual element property or evaluation is not selected.