Find and Replace text in several files

Can automator do that?
I made a website in iweb and as the ones of you that had already tried it must know, it is impossible to change the font format on the links, you have to hack the code manually, changing the .css files.
I think a trick would be to get automator to replace the code automatically, to lock for a string of text inside a group of files and save it. I just don't know how to do it. Can anybody help?
The most I have been able to do is to get automator to open all .css files within a folder, inlcuidng all subfolders and open them on textedit.

I doubt anyone is going to download and look at your code. Please remember that anyone who helps you here is a volunteer, and so the onus is on you to make helping you as easy as possible to do. That means you must take the effort to pare your code down to the bare minimum that shows your problem and compiles, and then post this code here. If you do decide to do this, please use code tags by highlighting your code after pasting it, and then pressing the Code button just above the editor window.
Good luck.

Similar Messages

How do I find and replace text in PHP files?

How can I in CS3 make sitewide changes to the text in PHP pages without changing variable names etc that have the same name?
For example if I have an installation of a PHP forum and I want to change every instance of the word 'forum' to 'message board'...
If I used the 'inside tag' search with " as the tag, then if "" contained a variable called 'forum' it would also be changed and therefore corrupt the code....
Is there a simple way around this?
Thanks!
I'm using CS3 on Windows Vista.

It looks like you're trying to find and replace source code, so you may be able to look at the various places that are looked at when finding and uncheck the ones that don't apply.
But, if it's all source code then that won't help. One thing that may work is to expand the search option - for example if the work "forum" that you're wanting to change it preceded by another word, or character or something that sets it apart, then do you find on that. You can expand that search phrase as far out in either direction that you need to to make it different, if of course that is practical in your situation.
The only other way I can think of is to somehow create an exception rule, but I'm not sure if that's possible or how to do it.

Use VBA and Excel to open Dreamweaver HTML (CS5), find and replace text, save and close

I wish to use VBA and Excel to programmatically open numbered Dreamweaver HTML (CS5) and find and replace text in the code view of these files, save and close them.
I have 5000 associations between Find: x0001 and Replace: y0001 in an Excel sheet.
I have the VBA written but do not know how to open, close and save the code view of the ####.html files. Please ... and thank you...
[email protected]

This is actually the code view of file ####.html that I wish to find and replace programmatically where #### is a four digit number cataloguing each painting.... In 1995 I thought this was clever... maybe not so clever now :>)) Thank you for whatever you can do Rob!
!####.jpg!
h2. "Name####"
Oils on acrylic foundation commercial canvas - . xx X xx (inches) Started
Back of the Painting In Progress </p> </body> </html>
Warmest regards,
Phil the Forecaster, http://philtheforecaster.blogspot.ca/ and http://phils-market.blogspot.ca/

Folder action to find and replace text and change line feeds

I want to use a folder action to find and replace text and change Mac carriage returns to DOS line feeds inside text files.
The text to be replaced is: "/Users/wim/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music" (without the quotes)
This text has to be removed (i.e. replaced by an empty string)
The text occurs many times within each file.
The files are playlists exported from iTunes in the M3U format (which are text files). They contain Mac carriage returns. These need to be changed to DOS line feeds.
I have found the following two perl commands to achieve this:
To find and replace text: perl -pi -w -e 's/THIS/THAT/g;' *.txt
To change carriage returns to line feeds: perl -i -pe 's/\015/\015\012/g' mac-file
I know that it's possible to make a folder action with Automator that executes a shell script.
What I want to do is drop the exported playlists in M3U format in a folder so that the folder action will remove the right text and change the carriage returns.
My questions are:
Is it possible to make a folder action that executes command line commands instead of shell scripts?
What is the correct syntax for the two commands when used in a folder action shell script? Especially, how do I escape the slashes (/) in the string to be removed?
Thanks for your help

Ok, I've include an applescript to run a shell command. The applesript command quoted form makes a string that will end up as a single string on the bash command line. Depending on what you want to do, you may need multiple string on the bash command lines. I've included some information on folder actions.
It is easier to diagnose problems with debug information. I suggest adding log statements to your script to see what is going on. Here is an example.
    Author: rccharles
    For testing, run in the Script Editor.
      1) Click on the Event Log tab to see the output from the log statement
      2) Click on Run
    For running shell commands see:
    http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2002/tn2065.html
on run
    -- Write a message into the event log.
    log " --- Starting on " & ((current date) as string) & " --- "
    -- debug lines
    set desktopPath to (path to desktop) as string
    log "desktopPath = " & desktopPath
    set unixDesktopPath to POSIX path of desktopPath
    log "unixDesktopPath = " & unixDesktopPath
    set quotedUnixDesktopPath to quoted form of unixDesktopPath
    log "quoted form is " & quotedUnixDesktopPath
    try
        set fromUnix to do shell script "ls -l " & quotedUnixDesktopPath
        display dialog "ls -l of " & quotedUnixDesktopPath & return & fromUnix
    on error errMsg
        log "ls -l error..." & errMsg
    end try
end run
How to set up a folder action.
1) right click on folder. click on Enable folder actions
2) Place script in
/Library/Scripts/Folder Actions Scripts
3) right click on folder. click on attach folder action
pick your script.
Create a new folder on the desktop & try.
You can put multiple folder actions on a folder. There are other ways of doing this.
Here is my test script:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving dropped_items
    repeat with dropped_item_ref in dropped_items
       display dialog "dropped files is " & dropped_item_ref & " on folder " & this_folder
    end repeat
end adding folder items to
How to make the text into an AppleScript program.
Start the AppleScript Editor
/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor.app
In Snow Leopard it's at: /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor
Copy the script text to the Applescript editor.
Note: The ¬ is typed as option+return. ption+return is the Applescript line continuation characters.
You may need to retype these characters.
Save the text to a file as an script and do not check any of the boxes below.

Find and Replace text string in HTML

Opps... I hope this forum is not just for Outlook. My Html files reside on my hard-drive. I am looking for VBA code to open specified file names ####File.html and then find and replace text strings within the html for example "####Name" replaced
with "YYYYY"
I drive the "####File.html" names and the find and replace text strings from an Excel sheet. I am an artist and this Sub would give me time to paint instead of find and replace text. Thank you!
[email protected]

Hello Phil,
The current forum is for developers and Outlook related programming questions. That's why I'd suggest hiring anybody for developing the code for you. You may find freelancers, for example. Try googling for any freelance-related web sites and asking such
questions there.
If you decide to develop an Outlook macro on your own, the
Getting Started with VBA in Outlook 2010 article is a good place to start from.

Find and replace text in multiple Photoshop files?

Hi there,
Let us say I have six Photoshop files: 1.psd, 2.psd, ..., 6.psd. All of these files contain the word “LoremIpsum” in random text layers, within each document. Is there a way I can search for “LoremIpsum” in all documents and replace it with “Dolor Sit Amet”, all in one go? This is just an example, I need to replace various words, not just one.
I have tried "batch find and replace" software (including powerful tools like Power Grep) but they do not work with psd files… Is there a javascript of external plugin for this kind of task?
Thanks!

You’re welcome, advice given here is free.
If you want to donate something nonetheless you could do so over at
http://ps-scripts.com/bb/
Many of the same people used to contribute there as here and I for one have benefitted considerably from their generous advice on Scripting issues.
A Script can read (or create) txt files, but I do not have a lot of experience with this.
This might work (amend the line »var theTexts = readPref ("….txt", false);« according to your txt-file’s path):
// replace text elements in type layers;
// 2013, use it at your own risk;
#target photoshop
if (app.documents.length > 0) {
          for (var n = 0; n < app.documents.length; n++) {
                    app.activeDocument = app.documents[n];
                    app.activeDocument.suspendHistory("replace text", "main()")
// the opertation;
function main () {
          var myDocument = app.activeDocument;
          var theTexts = readPref ("….txt", false);
          var theArray1 = theTexts.slice(0, Math.round(theTexts.length/2));
          var theArray2 = theTexts.slice(Math.round(theTexts.length/2), theTexts.length);
          alert (theArray1.join("\n")+"\n\n\n"+theArray2.join("\n"))
          for (var b = 0; b < theArray1.length; b++) {
                    replaceText (theArray1[b], theArray2[b])
////// reoplace text //////
function replaceText (replaceThis, replaceWith) {
// =======================================================
var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
    var desc22 = new ActionDescriptor();
    var idnull = charIDToTypeID( "null" );
        var ref3 = new ActionReference();
        var idPrpr = charIDToTypeID( "Prpr" );
        var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
        ref3.putProperty( idPrpr, idreplace );
        var idTxLr = charIDToTypeID( "TxLr" );
        var idOrdn = charIDToTypeID( "Ordn" );
        var idAl = charIDToTypeID( "Al " );
        ref3.putEnumerated( idTxLr, idOrdn, idAl );
    desc22.putReference( idnull, ref3 );
    var idUsng = charIDToTypeID( "Usng" );
        var desc23 = new ActionDescriptor();
        var idfind = stringIDToTypeID( "find" );
        desc23.putString( idfind, replaceThis );
        var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
        desc23.putString( idreplace, replaceWith );
        var idcheckAll = stringIDToTypeID( "checkAll" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idcheckAll, true );
        var idFwd = charIDToTypeID( "Fwd " );
        desc23.putBoolean( idFwd, true );
        var idcaseSensitive = stringIDToTypeID( "caseSensitive" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idcaseSensitive, false );
        var idwholeWord = stringIDToTypeID( "wholeWord" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idwholeWord, false );
        var idignoreAccents = stringIDToTypeID( "ignoreAccents" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idignoreAccents, true );
    var idfindReplace = stringIDToTypeID( "findReplace" );
    desc22.putObject( idUsng, idfindReplace, desc23 );
executeAction( idreplace, desc22, DialogModes.NO );
////// read prefs file //////
function readPref (thePath, binary) {
if (File(thePath).exists == true) {
    var file = File(thePath);
    file.open("r");
    if (binary == true) {file.encoding= 'BINARY'};
    var theText = file.read();
    file.close();
    return String(theText).split(",")
In this case the comma is used to split the text into Strings in Arrays, if your search/replace texts include commas you could use something else, I guess.

Find and Replace text in files

Is there a function that will find and replace a word in a few text files at once. E.G replace the word database1 with database2 without going into each script individually and doing and search and replace.

Andrew, you are being so cruel, hardnuts indeed ;)
I won't mention any names, but at least it's not as cruel as some people saying “You may read DBMS_STATS package specification, at least, to get details, if you're too lazy to read manuals.”
Personally I prefer to use a development tool (TOAD, Pl/Sql Developer) instead of a Text type editor.

[Forum FAQ] How to find and replace text strings in the shapes in Excel using Windows PowerShell

Windows PowerShell is a powerful command tool and we can use it for management and operations. In this article we introduce the detailed steps to use Windows PowerShell to find and replace test string in the
shapes in Excel Object.
Since the Excel.Application
is available for representing the entire Microsoft Excel application, we can invoke the relevant Properties and Methods to help us to
interact with Excel document.
The figure below is an excel file:
Figure 1.
You can use the PowerShell script below to list the text in the shapes and replace the text string to “text”:
$text = “text1”,”text2”,”text3”,”text3”
$Excel
= New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$Excel.visible = $true
$Workbook
= $Excel.workbooks.open("d:\shape.xlsx")
#Open the excel file
$Worksheet
= $Workbook.Worksheets.Item("shapes")
#Open the worksheet named "shapes"
$shape = $Worksheet.Shapes
# Get all the shapes
$i=0
# This number is used to replace the text in sequence as the variable “$text”
Foreach ($sh in $shape){
$sh.TextFrame.Characters().text
# Get the textbox in the shape
$sh.TextFrame.Characters().text =
$text[$i++]
#Change the value of the textbox in the shape one by one
$WorkBook.Save()
#Save workbook in excel
$WorkBook.Close()
#Close workbook in excel
[void]$excel.quit()
#Quit Excel
Before invoking the methods and properties, we can use the cmdlet “Get-Member” to list the available methods.
Besides, we can also find the documents about these methods and properties in MSDN:
Workbook.Worksheets Property (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff835542(v=office.15).aspx
Worksheet.Shapes Property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff821817(v=office.15).aspx
Shape.TextFrame Property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff839162(v=office.15).aspx
TextFrame.Characters Method (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff195027(v=office.15).aspx
Characters.Text Property (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff838596(v=office.15).aspx
After running the script above, we can see the changes in the figure below:
Figure 2.
Please click to vote if the post helps you. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thank you for the information, but does this thread really need to be stuck to the top of the forum?
If there must be a sticky, I'd rather see a link to a page on the wiki that has links to all of these ForumFAQ posts.
EDIT: I see this is no longer stuck to the top of the forum, thank you.
Don't retire TechNet! -
(Don't give up yet - 13,085+ strong and growing)

How to find and replace text in Excel with Automator

I am new to Automator. And I would like some help how I can create a service that will allow me to find and replace certain text in Excel. I noticed that there is an action to do this for Word documents, but not for Excel document.
Any suggestions how I can do this?
Thanks so much for your help.

Easiest way to do it is the following:
- Open the PDF file in Acrobat.
- Go to Tools - Forms - More Form Options - Export Data.
- Save the form data as an XML file somewhere on your system.
- Open XML the file in a plain-text editor (I recommend Notepad++).
- Let's say you want to replace all the years in the dates from "2013" to "2014". Do a global Search&Replace of "2013-" to "2014-" (I added the dash just to make sure that only date fields are edited).
- Save the XML file (maybe under a new name).
- Go back to the PDF file, and now go to Tools - Forms - More Form Options - Import Data.
- Select the edited XML file and import it.
- Done!

Find and Replace Text box

I have a document with roughly 50 pages. At the bottom of each page is a text box about with my address going across. I moved so I need to update the address, only problem is the address is longer so after using find and replace I would have to go to each text box and re-size. IS there a way to replace them all with new one or is there some way to add footer and I have been doing it wrong all along?
Thanks for your time and help.

This is what master pages are for.
Bob

Find and Replace text and change font help needed.

I am completely new to Scripting and I'm sure this is quite simple but I do not know where to start.
I have a FM template that is populated with "raw" text from a database.
Within the text are several characters (+, @, *, $, # and %).
I need to replace these characters with symbols from a different font e.g.:
Each instance of:
"+" to be replaced with Wingdings 2 font - Lowercase t
"@" to be replaced with Wingdings 2 font - Lowercase u
"*" to be replaced with Wingdings font - Uppercase E etc.
I would like to automate the process and believe a script would enable me to do this.
I have tried looking on the forum, but can not find anything suitable to help me (or I'm looking in the wrong place).
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Kev

not really
important is the Illustrator Text Object-model, which is not very easy to understand.
And the Core JS String and regExp Objekts.
Have a look at this:
http://www.ogebab.de/home/skripte/text/replace
The dialog is poor (because of compatibility) and it works simply on TextFrames.contents, i don't know if this is good i all cases.
But i use it not very often so i don't want to rewrite it.
Maybe it is a starting-point for you.
But maybe it is more then you need.
try this:
//select a text
var text = app.activeDocument.selection[0];
var string = text.contents;
string = string.replace(/ /g," ");
text.contents= string;
/ /g is a regular expression
.replace() is a method of the String Object
both explained at
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference

Find and Replace across multiple PDF files

Hello,
The company I work for has recently changed it's name from (for example!) "Rob's Company" to "Dave's Company".
I have a folder with several thousand PDF files where "Rob's Company" is mentioned and I want to find/replace this for "Dave's Company" in one job (as opposed to opening each file and doing a find/replace in each one).
I am happy to purchase a copy of Adobe Acrobat in order to do this, but I'm unsure if it is capable of doing so. I know it is possible to do this for individual files, but not sure that it can do a find/replace for all files in a particular folder.
I hope someone is able to assist me, I'd be very grateful.
Best wishes,
Rob

I totally agree with you regarding keeping the source files; it's common sense isn't it! I've only worked at this company for 14 days and the vast majority of docs are years old so it would be nearly impossible to trace back the owner of the document internally and then for who their contact is at the client who originally sent it over. With staff turnover you'd probably get nowhere pretty slowly!
Thanks very much for your redact suggestion. Is that basically where you "stick" new text over the old? The phrases to be changed are reasonably simalar in length (new text is 1 character smaller) so if there was a small gap at the end of the phrase I wouldn't loose sleep over it.
Thanks again for your help - as I say with just 14 days in the company it would be nice to get this job done without involving too many people so it looks good to my new bosses!
Rob

Find and replace string in a file using batch script

I am writing a batch script to replace " ", with " ". The below code works but it prefixes each line with the line number and :.
It is the last part of the line that I am trying to replace.
E.g.
" ","BALANCE_SHEET ","ASSETS ","03","LEVEL_2 ",Asset Accounts," ",
To be replaced as
" ","BALANCE_SHEET ","ASSETS ","03","LEVEL_2 ",Asset Accounts," "
Code:
@echo off &setlocal
set "search=" ","
set "replace=" ""
set "textfile=Build_Accounts_Plan_Source.txt"
set "newfile=Build_Accounts_Plan_Source_new.txt"
(for /f "delims=" %%i in ('findstr /n "^" "%textfile%"') do (
set "line=%%i"
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set "line=!line:%search%=%replace%!"
echo(!line!
endlocal
))>"%newfile%"
type "%newfile%"
Output:
3:" ","BALANCE_SHEET ","ASSETS ","03","LEVEL_2 ",Asset Accounts," "
Regards,
Ragav.

Did you retype the code or did you use copy/paste? Retyping is not a good idea.
You can do this to find the cause of the problem:
Run the modified code below.
Use notepad.exe to open the file TempVBS.vbs in your %temp% folder.
Mark & copy the code, then paste it into your reply.
@echo off
set "textfile=Build_Accounts_Plan_Source.txt"
set "newfile=Build_Accounts_Plan_Source_new.txt"
set Scr="%temp%\TempVBS.vbs"
( echo Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject"^)
echo Set oInput = oFSO.OpenTextFile(WScript.Arguments(0^), 1^)
echo sData = Replace(oInput.ReadAll, "," ^& VbCrLf, VbCrLf^)
echo Set oOutput = oFSO.CreateTextFile(WScript.Arguments(1^), True^)
echo oOutput.Write sData
echo oInput.Close
echo oOutput.Close) > %Scr%
cscript //nologo %Scr% %textfile% %newfile%

Indesign script to find and replace from external excel file

I have been asked to update an existing price list (set up as lots of small tables) in Indesign (500+ pages). I have been given a new Excel spreadsheet with the product codes and new prices. I am looking for some assistance on finding or creating a script that can do such a thing if at all possible to speed up the process over just copying and pasting. Does anyone have any suggestions or point me in the right direction?

1. Your Excel conversion to FindChangeList format idea seems okay, apart from one thing: both findWhat and changeTo strings should have double quotes around them. As they are now,
grep {findWhat:lang1"} {changeTo:"lang2} {incl...(etc.)
the opening one after findWhat and the closing one after changeTo are missing.
2. Your first line contains 2 definitions. Each separate definition should be on a line of its own. (This might occur elsewhere as well, didn't check.)
3. Any double quotes inside strings will cause problems. Precede them with a backslash to 'escape' them and convert them to a literal character. I found this one:
"(for IC5/8"V)"
-- change to
"(for IC5/8\"V)"
4. Some of your strings start with double double quotes:
changeTo:""(MITM刀具见254页 ...
5. To prevent your problem with this order
grep {findWhat:Inserts"} ...
grep {findWhat:Inserts Ordering Code System"} ...
sort your Excel list alphabetically, case preserving, in reverse order.
You probably also want wholeWord:true, and caseSensitive:true.
Hope this helps!

Find and replace string in file

hi,
i need to find and replace text (string) data in about 100+ files, i've decided to write a small java program to do it but i'm stuck on how to replace.
here is what i'm heading towards:
class ReplaceString {
BufferedReader in;
BufferedReader os;
public static void main(String args[]) {
    ReplaceString obj = new ReplaceString();
    obj.replace();
   void replace() {
     try {
       in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("a.txt");
       os = new BufferdWriter(new FileWriter("a.txt");
       // read until end of file
       String currentLine = new String();
       while((currenLine=is.readLine()) != null) {
         // if matching text then replace????
         if(currentLine.equals("Version 001") {
            // how to now replace the Version 001 with Version 002???
     }catch(IOException e) {
        System.out.println(e);
        in.close();
        os.close();
     in.close();
     os.close();
}the above code i just typed so there might be errors, but looks ok to me, is there any way once i find the string i want to replace, to replace the string with another string. basically i want to replace all occurrences of the text "Version 001" with "Version 002"
Thank you.

Is it always true, as in your example, that the replacement is the same length as the existing string? If so, this one's easy.
Is it also true that you don't need to worry about 16-bit chars? (Again, as in your example.) If you're using just ASCII characters, this gets easier still.
1) Segregate the file I/O from the search/replace process.
2) Main becomes:
readFile();
replace( "this", "that" );
writeFile();Use a byte array buffer, defined in your main class. Fill it via the readFile() code. Use a RandomAccessFile, check its length() to allocate your byte array, then do a single read() to fill the buffer.
A brute force search will certainly work: scan for the first search character, then check the rest for a match, replace if you've got a match and continue scanning. Alternative if your file's aren't too big: create a String from the byte array:
// buffer is a byte array
String s = new String( buffer );And use the String.replaceAll() to do the search/replace. Recover the buffer with:
buffer = string.getBytes();A single write() and close() should handle the remaining work.

Find and Replace text in several files

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