Searching by formatting does not work

[Tobruk]

Hi,

LibreOffice Writer seems not to be able to search by formatting - even the simplest settings like bold don’t work, despite the fact that there are multiple instances of bold text in the document I’m working with.

There has to be something off about the formatting in this document, though, so I attach a brief sample for anyone curious to check. Basically, according to my testing, if the text gets copied to calc, for example, the bold is maintained. But as soon as you re-copy the spreadsheet into Writer (ctrl+shift+v as rich text, which should keep the formatting), the bold is gone. Moreover, if you export the file from Writer/Calc into, let’s say, HTML, the entire text loses bold formatting as well!

I suspect (?) the problem may stem from the document being a result of OCR (character recognition), but I don’t know any workarounds for the problem (Writer formatting search doesn’t work; Calc formatting search doesn’t exist; exporting to any other file format loses the formatting) - selecting the bold segments automatically IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for what I’m trying to achieve.

Regards

sample.odt

[Tobruk]

This add-on solved the problem: https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/alternative-dialog-find-replace-for-writer

When you install it, open it, then pick from category Properties > Bold, and then in the “Replace” section write & to reference the text you want to change.

In my case I wrote <b>&</b>.

Hope it helps someone