The Search menu contains commands that let you search through a document either for text that you specify, or other instances of the current text selection.
This command opens the Find dialogue box, where you can specify what text (search pattern) to find.
Searching normally takes place from the caret to the end of the document, looking for any match without taking into account whether letters are in upper or lower case. If the search fails to find anything before the end of the document, Writer asks if you want to continue searching from the start of the document.
Option icons allow you to modify the type of search and the search parameters:
The character ‘?’ means ‘find any single occurrence of any character’.
e.g. the search pattern ‘b?d’ would find ‘bad’, ‘bed’, ‘bid’ etc., and the search pattern ‘b??d’ would find ‘bald’, ‘band’, ‘bold’ and so on.
You can also search for special characters. Use the combinations shown below:
Type | To search for |
@n | Carriage return (end of paragraph). |
@t | Tab. |
@v | Line feed (forced new line). |
@? | ? |
@@ | @ |
Find selection (Shift-F5) uses the current selection as the search pattern (limited to the first 255 characters).