I have a text file with carriage returns. In all cases, the carriage returns are proceeded by either a letter or a space. I need to delete all cases of space followed by carriage return. To do this, I'm using s\$ in the find dialog box and leaving the replace box blank. While the find tool accurately locates all cases of s\$, when I click replace, only the space is deleted. Interestingly, if I search using just $, and click replace, the carriage return is deleted. Any suggestions?

Great extension ! Works well on ubuntu with open office 3.2.0
Thank you !

I would also like to report having problems with this extension - it doesn't react at all. Can this be corrected? I am using the latest OpenOffice. Thank you in advance.

I've found AltSearch a huge help working with old converted files; the LibreOffice people are nuts to build in the extensions they did and not this one!

Unfortunately, installing your latest version with current official-RPM versions of OOo (and, after completely removing OOo, LibreO) today threw an error similar to someone else's; it was auto-disabled & error reappears if I enable it. Rebooting didn't help.
The error (with the .office and variable after Backend/ changing based on the install):
(com.sun.star.uno.RuntimeException) { { Message = "bad root element in file:///home/xyzzy/.libreoffice/3/user/uno_packages/cache/registry/com.sun.star.comp.deployment.configuration.PackageRegistryBackend/1o6kOG_/addon.xcu", Context = (com.sun.star.uno.XInterface) @0 } }

it is great tool!
Author! thank's a lot for this excellent addon!
may be it will be useful for anybody(and not only me) to get "element of table of contents"(or how it named in english) in "replace" list?
last target is to get table of contents based on text with specific symbol style.

God bless the author!

This great extension has always been my favorite. I upgraded to the latest version of OOo, 3.2.1, and now nothing happens. When I click on the icon it simply does nothing. I am running Vista.

I cannot install version 1.3.1 into OOo_Dev300m80
I get the msg
(com.sun.star.uno.RuntimeException){{Message = "bad root element in file:
///Users/~/Library/Application Support/OOo-dev/3/user/uno_packages/cache/
uno_packages/7irZ2Z_/AltSearch.oxt/addon.mod", Context = (com.sun.star.uno.Xinterface)@0}}
-------------------
Al Maloney
Using OOo_Dev_DEV300 on Mac OS X 10.6.3
"Velox Versutus Vigilans"

Hi - I love this extension, but since upgrading my system it won't install for me. I recently installed Ubuntu Lucid 10.04LTS, which comes with OOo 3.2 (OOO320m13, Build:9483, to be precise). The extension shows as installed under the Extension Manager, but no toolbar button or menu item is created. Is there anywhere I can file a bug report or get some support?

... and same error message:

"BASIC runtime error.
An exception occurred.
Type: com.sun.star.container.NoSuchElementException
Message: ."

but my highlighted line in the code reads:

oLibContainer.LoadLibrary(LibName)

(Just in case, I've tried the solution the author proposed in reply to the other comment, a previous version of the extension, but no luck)

Any idea what might be the problem, anybody? This extension is really useful, I'd hate to do without it!

Running OOo 3.1.1

Thanks

There is an issue with searching within large paragraphs:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=108273

I wonder if you can make this excellent extension to work where the native one fails.

This extension has been great, and I appreciate all of the documentation that goes with it - except I was unable to find documentation that explained how to simply replace some text in a regular font with a bolded font. Apparently this involves understanding internal OpenOffice character style attributes. (Does someone know of an easier way that I missed?) Hopefully this will help someone out in a similar situation...

I had text of the form "Region 1" or "Region 11" where I wanted to make every occurrence bold. Here's what I did:

Find (using Regular Expressions): ^Region\s([0-9][0-9]?)
Replace: \C{Quotation}\A{CharWeight=150%}\A{CharPosture=0}

The first part of the replace (\C{Quotation}) was added by choosing "Character Style" from the Replace drop-down list. The second parts were more difficult to determine. The general format of (\A{SOMETHING}) was listed in the replace drop-down as well, but neither CharWeight nor CharPosture were actual options in the PickProperties drop-down. I found that these were the actual options I needed to use by trial and error and eventually found what the available attributes were for each style by going to http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/Text/For.... According to the wiki, while things like BOLD and NONE (for CharWeight and CharPosture respectively) are supposed to be valid options for these styles, neither would work and I had to use a numeric value.

The CharPosture part was necessary because whenever I used CharWeight to make the text bold, it automatically italicized the text as well. Including CharPosture=0 was necessary to make it un-italicized again. I'm not sure if this is a bug in OpenOffice or the extension, or just by-design.

Overall, I'm pleased at the power of this extension and it still saved me a lot of time and manual formatting... but there is still room for improvement in the documentation and in making it easier to use. All in all, thanks for making it!

(Using Alternative Find & Replace for Writer version 1.2.1 on OpenOffice.org 3.0.0)

You say (6th bullet) "It is possible to select at once texts of all footnotes or endnotes and to assign them any style".
I am using oOo 3.0.0 in XPproSP2 and am not a beginner - but need help now. I can get as far as [::BigBlock::] but cannot define "start" and "end" in a functional manner. Note 1 starts with "[superscript] 1Joel" and note 52 ends with "39-47" - both are unique instances. But "1Joel[::BigBlock::]39-47" does not "select all" - nor does "Joel[::BigBlock::]39-47" (ignore superscript).
If I can get this to work - with your help - how do I change the para style?
Note: this is done (hate to say it) in M$Word by: highlight any footnote, CTRL+A, format para - 3 clicks only.
Tnx - Paul

Just installed in 2.4.1 (linux) and find that the opened window for the macro is too small to be of use.

The box is cuts off just after "Extend" on the right, and just below "Match case" on the bottom.
Same problem in OOo 3.0 (M17).

The search box window shows correctly in OOo 2.3.1.

I really recommend this extension. It is very flexible, and it allows very complex search and replace operations.
I use it to search for broken cross-references. It is irreplaceable for this, as Writer does not offer any other possibility to do so!
Also, Tomas has put very much effort in the documentation, that I find very helpful indeed.

I've started spanish localization some weeks ago.
It's almost done.

Really good extension.