Mass find and replace

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Author Message David G. Axt, CCS, CSI ,SCIP Senior Member Username: david_axt Post Number: 1364 Registered: 03-2002 Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2014 - 05:50 pm:    I am writing specifications for an architect who is writing his own Division 01 specification sections. Well my Division 02 through 14 specifications refer to MY Division 01 section numbers. So I would like to find a way to search all the specifications and change my Div 01 section numbers to his Div 01 section numbers. Any ideas? David G. Axt, CCS, CSI, SCIP Specifications Consultant/Web Publisher www.localproductreps.com user (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2014 - 06:36 pm:    It might be easier to have him change his Division 01 numbers to agree with your numbers. David E Lorenzini Senior Member Username: deloren Post Number: 156 Registered: 04-2000 Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2014 - 08:12 pm:    David You would have to run a macro that analyzed each section in the folder and save the results to an output file. This would require an expert to create. You could run a simple search macro using wild cards on each section individually. This is more tedious, but a bit easier to create. A no macro option: I had a similar problem a few years ago, but the contractor in this case did not include all the necessary sections. Therefore, I had to include some of my own Division 01 sections. The solution I used was to include all the Divisions 01 sections that I normally reference from my other Divisions. The Division 01 sections that were replaced by the contractor just included a single statement to refer to the contractor's section number. In other words, I passed my Division 01 references to the contractor's Section equivalents. To keep files in separate groups, I put the contractors sections in Division 00. I don't remember where I put it, or if even if I was using MF95 at the time. The contractor was providing all the other Division 00 documents, so it kept the process clean. David Lorenzini, FCSI, CCS Architectural Resources Co. William C. Pegues, FCSI, CCS Senior Member Username: wpegues Post Number: 914 Registered: 10-2002 Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2014 - 10:55 pm:    I think that you can do this with a simple search and find. I don't know what version of Word you are using, but you can open up multiple documents and when you bring up the search and replace, there should be a pick or menu drop down that gives options for different directions in the document to search, and the last on the list is "search all open documents". I do this for replacing job and date information in my headers, no macro, no anything, just search and replace. I open up about 60 documents at a time, do the search and replace on them. Done. Whole procedure takes about 3 minutes to do 120 files. Now, this is not the same as looking for only 3 different things that I look for, but it will remember the last 6 searches and what you replaced them with - I think it remembers up to 6. So, you could bring up a batch of 60 documents and do it that way, then next batch and the search and replace fields will let you search for the same things. Then you have to start over looking for the next batch. I would think it should not take more than about 30 minutes of really boring activity -grin! On the other hand, what I did when I was updating my 1995 MF references to 2004 MF, every time I cross referenced back to another section, I had used the world "Section". So, I would open the documents one at a time and search for "Section". Then I would copy from a list from another document and paste the new number/title to replace the reference in the section. That takes longer, but, is more linear, less boring (somewhat). But, you have a small number of sections you are looking for, only Division 1 sections, though a large number of sections you need to open. without the craving to write a macro for the elegance of simply having done so (more time to write it than to actually do it all manually), this later system might be the best. Some things seem like a boring task, but to automate them takes even more time. boring manual tasks are sometimes faster than 'elegant solutions'. William C. Pegues, FCSI, CCS, SCIP Affiliate WDG Architecture, Washington, DC | Dallas, TX