QuarkXPress 8 : Checking spelling (part 2) - Searching and replacing, Exporting text

4. Searching and replacing

QuarkXPress provides a sophisticated Find/Change palette (Edit menu) that lets you search and replace any combination of text and character attributes (Figure 4). The Find/Change palette works as follows:

• You can type or paste text into the Find What and Change To fields.
  
  
• To enter a wildcard character to search for, press Command+Shift+? (Mac) or Control+Shift+? (Windows). You might use the wildcard character to find variations of a name spelling such as “Bobby” and “Bobbi,” then change both to “Bobbie.”
  
  
• To specify how much of the layout to search, use the Layout and Search Locked Content check boxes. Master pages and other layouts within a project need to be checked separately.
  
  
• Check Whole Word to find only stand-alone instances of the Find What text. When Whole Word is unchecked, a search for “color” would find “color” by itself and within the word “Colorado.”
  
  
• Check Ignore Case to find both uppercase and lowercase instances of the Find What text. When Ignore Case is unchecked, both the Find What and Change To fields are case sensitive.
  
  
• Option+click (Mac) or Alt+click (Windows) the Find Next button to change it to Find First.
  
  

Figure 4. The Find/Change palette with Ignore Attributes checked is useful for a quick search and replace of text.

Uncheck Ignore Attributes to include character attributes in a search and replace operation. You can use this to find text and change only its formatting, find and change instances of specific formatting regardless of the text, find specific text and formatting combinations and change them entirely, and so on (Figure 5). Use the controls on the Find What and Change To sides to specify exactly what to find and how to change it. The Type Style buttons on both sides are three-state buttons:

• On: If a type style is on (black) on the Find What side, text with that type style applied is found. If a type style is on (black) on the Change To side, that type style is applied to changed text.

• Indeterminate: If a type style is gray on the Find What side, that type style is not considered in the search—text with or without it applied will be found. If a type style is gray on the Change To side, that type style is left alone if applied to changed text.

• Off: If a type style is off (white) on the Find What side, text with that type style applied is not found. If a type style is off (white) on the Change To side, that type style is removed from the changed text.

Figure 5. In this Find/Change operation, the text “Colorado Christmas” is found and then changed to “Christmas in Colorado,” a character style is applied, and the size is changed to 20 point.

Tip: Finding and Changing Invisible Characters

To search and replace special characters—for example, to replace two paragraph returns with one—you can paste them in the Find What and Change To fields. To see invisible characters to copy them, choose View > Invisibles. The fields display the codes for the invisible characters, which generally consist of a slash in front of a letter (/p for paragraph return, /t for tab, /n for line break, and so on). If you use these codes often, you can memorize them and enter them in the fields.

5. Exporting text

Sometimes you need to get text out of QuarkXPress—for example, for revisions, translation, backup, or use in different media. You can export selected text or all the text in a story (a series of linked boxes) in popular formats such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, HTML, and RTF. To export text, select the text or click in a story to export all of its text. Choose File > Save Text and choose an option from the Format menu (Figure 6).

Figure 6. The Save Text dialog box (File menu) lets you export text in commonly used formats such as Microsoft Word and HTML.

The XPress Tags format saves text with proprietary tags that indicate all QuarkXPress formatting. Publishers can save text as XPress Tags and send the text out to be edited. When the text is reimported, the XPress Tags are translated into actual QuarkXPress formatting. For more information about XPress Tags, see the XPress Tags Guide.pdf in your QuarkXPress 8 folder (Documents > English).

Note: Exporting All the Text in a Layout

You can only export text in one story at a time in QuarkXPress. There is no quick way to export all the text in all the boxes throughout a layout. If you know you will need to export text—for example, if you know it will be translated—try to plan the layout with as many linked boxes as possible. More linked boxes means fewer stories to export.