正则表达式在 MS Word 中查找/替换文本不起作用

Question

I have an output from a python script I wrote, which consists of portions of text extracted from a big dataset, after matching some pattern through regular expressions.

For the sake of visualization I would like to use MS Word to highlight such patterns within those portions of text, and I tried to use find/replace with the same regex I used in my script but without luck.

EXAMPLE: I want to find every occurrence of the pattern work (?:\\w+ )?(?:\\w+ )? children work (?:\\w+ )?(?:\\w+ )? children , ie allow at most any two other words between work and children , in the text

"[...] ability to work with children must be proven. Social Worker Job Essex Our Essex based client require permanent Social Workers to work in children and families teams. You should be a qualified Social Worker DIPSW, CQSW, CSS or equivalent [...]"

Running find/replace with the above regex to the above text don't return any match (wildcards allowed).

Which regex should I use? Any help will be appreciated

Answer 1

In Word, you would need to use two wildcard Finds:

Find = work <[! ]@> children

for cases with one intervening word, and

Find = work <[! ]@> <[! ]@> children

for cases with two intervening words.

Answer 2

As already noted by others, this is not possible in Microsoft Word's flavor of regular expressions. Instead, you should use standard regular expressions. It is actually possible to use standard regular expressions in MS Word if you use a special tool that integrates into Microsoft Word called Multiple Find & Replace (see http://www.translatortools.net/products/transtoolsplus/word-multiplefindreplace ). This tool opens as a pane to the right of the document window and works just like the Advanced Find & Replace dialog. However, in addition to Word's existing search functionality, it can use the standard regular expressions syntax to search and replace any text within a Word document.

In your particular case, your expression

work (?:\\w+ )?(?:\\w+ )?children

will work fine.

Multiple Find & Replace is quite powerful: you can add any number of expressions (either using regular expressions or using Word's standard search syntax) to a list and then search the document for all of them, replace everything, display all matches in a list and replace only specific matches, and a few more things.

I created this tool for translators and editors, but it is great for any advanced search/replace operations in Word, and I am sure you will find it very useful.

Best regards, Stanislav