How To Find A Lower Case Letter at The Begining of A Paragraph

12/1/2015
Howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingofaparagraph?MicrosoftCommunity
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Applies to Office | Office 2007 | Microsoft Office Word
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How to find a lower case letter at the

begining of a paragraph?
MA
Mamaijee asked on October 13, 2010
I have a long document which is a converted file. Some paras are broken. How do I do a search
in Word 2007 to find paras which begin with a lower case letter preceded by a para mark ie ^p
Thank you
3 people had this question

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Answer
Jay Freedman replied on October 13, 2010
Accomplishments
In the Find dialog, click the More button and check the box for "Use wildcards". Then put the
following expression into the Find What box:
http://answers.microsoft.com/enus/office/forum/office_2007word/howtofindalowercaseletteratthebeginingof/0bb136dae80941dcb7f6cb6b4653
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12/1/2015
^13[az]
Then use the Find Next or Find In or Reading Highlight button, depending on what you want to
do.
If you want to use the Replace dialog to remove the paragraph marks from all the instances at
once, after checking "Use wildcards", put this in the Find What box:
^13[az]
and put this in the Replace With box:
\1
include a space character before the slash if the line before the paragraph mark doesn't end with
a space. Then click the Replace All button.
Jay Freedman
MS Word MVPFAQ: http://word.mvps.org
http://jayfreedman.info
4 people found this helpful

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Answer
Doug Robbins Word MVP replied on October 13, 2010
Accomplishments
In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010

Did you use
^13[az]
in the Find what control? It sounds like you just used
^13[az]
Hope this helps.
Doug Robbins Word MVP,
dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org
Posted via the Community Bridge
"Mamaijee" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...
Yes I did.
Doug Robbins Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org

2/9
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Hope this helps,

Doug Robbins Word MVP
dkr@mvps.org
dougrobbinsmvp@gmail.com
1 person found this helpful

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All replies (11)

Answer
Accomplishments
In the Find dialog, click the More button and check the box for "Use wildcards". Then put the
following expression into the Find What box:
^13[az]
Then use the Find Next or Find In or Reading Highlight button, depending on what you want to
do.
If you want to use the Replace dialog to remove the paragraph marks from all the instances at
once, after checking "Use wildcards", put this in the Find What box:
^13[az]
and put this in the Replace With box:
\1
include a space character before the slash if the line before the paragraph mark doesn't end with
a space. Then click the Replace All button.
Jay Freedman
4 people found this helpful

Helpful
Reply
3/9
12/1/2015
MA
Mamaijee replied on October 13, 2010
In reply to Jay Freedman's post on October 13, 2010

Jay, thank you for taking the time to reply, the find part worked correctybut when I did replace "
\1" without quotes I keeping getting the message
"The replace group text contains a number which is out of range".
What should I do?
Thank you
Be the first person to mark this helpful

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Stefan Blom replied on October 13, 2010

Accomplishments

Did you remember to select the Use wildcards option?
Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP
Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP

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MA
Reply
In reply to Stefan Blom's post on October 13, 2010

Yes I did.
4/9
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Helpful
Reply
Answer
Accomplishments

Did you use
^13[az]
in the Find what control? It sounds like you just used
^13[az]
Hope this helps.
Yes I did.
Hope this helps,

dkr@mvps.org

Helpful
MA
Reply
5/9
12/1/2015
In reply to Doug Robbins Word MVP's post on October 13, 2010

Thank you Doug; It worked; you were absolutely right. I used^13[az] in the Find what control
instead of ^13[az]
You have saved me a lot of work; appreciate it!
Can u explain one more thing for my future reference I understood that ^13[az] means that
Word will search for a para end sign followed by any alphabet in lower case; but what does \1
mean in replace. U can tell I am not up with wildcards!

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Reply

Accomplishments

For a full explanation of the use of Wildcards, see the following page of fellow MVP Graham
Mayor's website:
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm
Hope this helps.
Thank you Doug; It worked; you were absolutely right. I used ^13[az] in the Find what
control instead of ^13[az]
You have saved me a lot of work; appreciate it!
Can u explain one more thing for my future reference I understood that ^13[az]
means that Word will search for a para end sign followed by any alphabet in lower
case; but what does \1 mean in replace. U can tell I am not up with wildcards!
Hope this helps,

dkr@mvps.org
6/9
12/1/2015

Helpful
Reply

Accomplishments

When you're using wildcards, if you enclose some part of the Find What expression in
parentheses, that forms a "replace group". Then in the Replace With expression you can use \1 to
include whatever
was matched by the replace group. If you enclose a second part of the Find What expression in
parentheses, you can use \2 to include that group, and so on.
There's much more about wildcards at
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm
Jay Freedman

Helpful
MA
Reply
Mamaijee replied on December 7, 2010
In reply to Jay Freedman's post on October 13, 2010

Hello Jay
The above tip was very helpful. It works when I do a search in Word 2007 to find paras which
begin with a lower case letter preceded by a para mark ie ^p
But I come up with a problem; if the para begins with a lower case letter, but before that lower
case letter there is a space, then this does not work.
What should I do to get over this please?
Thank u
Mamaijee
7/9
12/1/2015

Helpful
Reply
Jay Freedman replied on December 7, 2010

Accomplishments
In reply to Mamaijee's post on December 7, 2010

To find a paragraph that starts with any number of spaces or tabs and then a lower case letter,
use the search term
^13[ ^09]@[az]
Notice that there is a space character after the first bracket. The ^09 represents a tab character.
You will have to do two separate searches one for paragraphs that have spaces or tabs at the
start, and one for paragraphs that have no spaces or tabs. Unfortunately, Word's wildcard
language cannot search for "zero or more" of a particular character, only for "one or more", so
there is no way to look for both kinds of paragraphs in the same search.
Jay Freedman

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12/1/2015

How to find a lower case letter at the

Mamaijee asked on October 13, 2010

3 people had this question

4 people found this helpful

In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010

Doug Robbins Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org

Hope this helps,

1 person found this helpful

All replies (11)

4 people found this helpful

Mamaijee replied on October 13, 2010

In reply to Jay Freedman's post on October 13, 2010

Be the first person to mark this helpful

Stefan Blom replied on October 13, 2010

In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010

Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP

Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP

1 person found this helpful

Mamaijee replied on October 13, 2010

In reply to Stefan Blom's post on October 13, 2010

Be the first person to mark this helpful

In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010

Doug Robbins Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org

Hope this helps,

1 person found this helpful

Mamaijee replied on October 13, 2010

In reply to Doug Robbins Word MVP's post on October 13, 2010

Be the first person to mark this helpful

Doug Robbins Word MVP replied on October 14, 2010

In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010

Doug Robbins Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org

Hope this helps,

Be the first person to mark this helpful

Be the first person to mark this helpful

Jay Freedman replied on October 14, 2010

In reply to Mamaijee's post on October 13, 2010

1 person found this helpful

Mamaijee replied on December 7, 2010

In reply to Jay Freedman's post on October 13, 2010

Be the first person to mark this helpful

Jay Freedman replied on December 7, 2010

In reply to Mamaijee's post on December 7, 2010

1 person found this helpful

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