Before V6 of Libreoffice in search and replace I could use the wild card .* to indicate all the items I had highlighted and then I could add a prefix to items in the field.
E.g IN a SKU column highlight all entries use find/replaced, use the wild card in the search (Find) field: .*. In the replace field put in NAME-& and click replace all would add “NAME-” to all entries.
This is not working any more in V6.
Has this been taken away or is there a bug?
Regards
Steve Hale
Hello @SteveHale,
For the wild cards to work, the checkbox Regular expressions must be checked in the Find&Replace dialog under Other options ( click the small arrow to expand the Options area ).
HTH, lib
Hi LibreRebel
You know I feel quite dumb. I knew that and just presumed when I installed 6 it would retain the settings that I had already and then promptly forgot out about it!
Thanks for your input and reminder!!
Cheers
S
Users coming from MS software often are accustomed to the term “wildcards” used there for the simple searching MS supports. LibreOffice and its predecessors always had included a search engine based on regular expressions (ICU now). The differences lie much deeper than the “Use .* instead of * only!”. (See this site e.g. or this one.)
Since V 5.2 of LibO there is also an option to support wildcards in the primitive way of MS. If this option is enabled search based on true regualr expressions is not supported.
This also applies to functions in Calc supporting search beyond simple literals (SEARCH, MATCH, VLOOKUP e.g.). The options in this case are set in Tools > Options > LibreOffice Calc > Calculate.
Thank you for your answer, and I admit my dumbness in forgetting to solution, reminded to me clearly by LibreRebel below.
I am not a MS Software user I have used OpenOffice and LibreOffice for years
S