Find and Replace, and Match Case on Replace

We've had a couple of people report recently, that the Find and Replace has not worked quite as expected, and that text that existed had not been found.

Known instances when text won't be found, include:

When the text is contained in an embedded topic,
When the text is contained in a nested book (or sub-book).

The Find and Replace search only searches for the Topics used directly in the Book - and does not search (Embedded) Topics used by the Topics in that Book, or in Topics contained in Books inside the Book. (We are looking at enhancing this behavior in a future release).

In those instances you can use the Object Search feature. If you select the Book, and (using the Advanced Search) choose to find all topics used by the specific Book, all topics - including embedded topics, and those in sub-books - are returned. You can then multi- select those Topics, and use the Find and Replace on the selected objects.

There has also been some confusion over the Match Case on Replace option.

The match works on the principle that when you replace text, the format and case (CAPITALS, Title Case, Sentence case, lowercase) of the text being replaced is preserved – not the case of the text you are replacing it with.

So on that theory if I was replacing the text the with da, it would be replaced as Da when found as The, and as da when found as the.

For example, using Match Case on Replace where the text was:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

it would be replaced as:

Da quick brown fox jumped over da lazy dog.

To replace text as it is typed (such as replacing the text Accelerator key with Shortcut key), you need to leave the Match Case on Replace box unchecked. Otherwise, if the text is found as Accelerator Key it will be replaced with Shortcut Key.