Macro help - Itals from txt

[edbro]

Can anybody think of a way in Word to convert the conventional "_ital_" in text files to be "ital"? I get lots of text files that use the underscore to annotate stop and start italics.

[HarryT]

I just do it manually. I've never come across a book where that takes more than a few minutes.

[kovidgoyal]

txt2lrf does this automatically.

[HarryT]

I actually prefer to do it manually, because PG texts are far from perfect - they very often leave out the closing underscore, or have it in the wrong place. Just another example of our differing approach, Kovid - you're creating tools for automatic conversion; I prefer the more "personal" approach . Both have their place.

[kovidgoyal]

Ah but see you could edit the txt file to your heart's content and then leave the _words_ for txt2lrf to take care of. Thereby reducing the amount of manual labor you need to put in. The *2lrf tools don't force you to do automatic conversion. I don't know if your familiar with TeX, but their philosophy is based on it. Think of them as the last stage of a toolchain, like a compiler. You prepare the sources (TXT or HTML files) and then compile them into machine readable output (LRF file).

Indeed txt2lrf was designed with the goal of allowing perfectionists like you to edit the TXT file to your hearts content and end up with a TXT file that looks good by itself and that can be automatically converted into a pretty LRF with images and a TOC and what have you.

[ricdiogo]

Originally Posted by edbro

Can anybody think of a way in Word to convert the conventional "_ital_" in text files to be "ital"? I get lots of text files that use the underscore to annotate stop and start italics.

Use _(*)_ (wildchars enabled) in the "Find" field. Then place your cursor in the "Replace" field and hit the More/Format/Font and select "Italic". Don't type anything in that field. Then "Replace all".
Then, write _ in the "Find" field (wildchars disabled). Be sure you remove the formatting instructions from the "Replace" field and that you haven't hit space bar in the field. "Replace all".

(Edit: )
If something looks wrong after you did this properly, probably the problem is that one of the _italics was not closed in the *.txt. The number of underscores in the *.txt must be a pair. Please report it to PG using errata (at) pglaf (dot) org email address.

[HarryT]

Brilliant! Thanks, Ricardo - I've never managed to get wildcard searches to work in Word.

[edbro]

When I tried it Word actually replaced everything with "(*)". Yes, I did check "use wildcards". What did I do wrong?

[ricdiogo]

You probably didn't use the underscore. It as to be: _(*)_
If you just use (*) you'll get the whole text in italics.

[edbro]

I did use the underscore. When I said it replaced everything, I meant it replaced all occurrences of _italics_ with _(*)_.

[edbro]

Ahh, I got it now. I was putting the _(*)_ in the replace field also. Thank you very much for your help.

[JSWolf]

I'm trying _(*)_ in Word 2003 and it just isn't working. what am I doing wrong?

Never mind.. got it working.

[ricdiogo]

No prob edbro
JSWolf describe your steps please.

[kovidgoyal]

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/he...873051033.aspx

[Stephanos]

For some reason, if you use the macro recorder while doing the search and replace described above, the resulting macro doesn't work. Through trial and error I found that you need to insert a line of code into the macro, so that it reads:

Sub UnderscoreToItal()
'
'
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "_(*)_"
        .Replacement.Text = ""
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = True
        .Replacement.Font.Italic = wdToggle
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchWildcards = True
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "_"
        .Replacement.Text = ""
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    
End Sub