When I attempt to search for italics and replace them with underlining, I get “Search key not found.” I’ve narrowed the problem to the search function not finding italic (i.e. not the replace function).
Interestingly, after I manually underline text, the search function can find underline…just not italic.
Writer Version = 4.0.3.3
OS = Windows 7 Pro
I think you need the Alternative Search extension. It gets mentioned quite a bit on AskLibO, it seems to me!
Check out this answer by @manj_k for example. You’ll see in his screenshot, that you can search for Properties > Italics. Then click “Find all”, and you can then change all italic to underline by clicking the relevant icons in the toolbar.
(Slight warning: in my test document, one instance of italics was missed – not sure why!)
Thanks for the reply. I had looked for the answer on my own (believe it or not!) and had seen the suggestion for Alternative Search, but was concerned by the red warning on the download page that the extension hadn’t had an update in 99+ years and that it wasn’t maintained because ogres had gnawed the entrails of the folks responsible and so forth…
As a result, I was wasn’t sure if that was still regarded as the optimum way to go about things. If Alternative Search is still the best solution, then I’ll go ahead.
As an aside, I’d like to suggest that the mainline search function in Writer be reconfigured. As things stand, it looks as though it has the ability to search for (and presumably replace) italics. Kinda confusing for those of us who take the function at face value. Or at least, you know, add a “Coming Soon” or something when you attempt to choose that particular combination of search/replace criteria. That way folks like me who are just kinda toddling along, trying to do the author thing, don’t tear out our hair unnecessarily.