Metacharacters for searching – Adobe InCopy CC 2015 User Manual
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Last updated 6/13/2015
Metacharacters for searching
Metacharacters represent a character or symbol in InDesign. Metacharacters in the Text section of the Find/Change
dialog box begin with a caret (^); metacharacters in the GREP section begin with a tilde (~) or backslash (\). You can
type metacharacters in the Text tab or GREP tab of the Find/Change dialog box.
Save time fixing punctuation errors by saving search strings as queries.
Single-line on
(?s)
(?s)c.a
The searches for any character ( . )
between the letters c and a. The
(?s) expression matches any
character, even if it falls on the
next line.
(.) matches anything other than a
paragraph return. (?s)(.) matches
anything, including paragraph
returns.
abc abc abc abc
abc abcabc abc
Single-line off
(?-s)c.a
abc abc abc abc
abc abc abc abc
Repeat number of times
{ }
b{3} matches exactly 3 times
b(3,} matches at least 3 times
b{3,}? matches at least 3 times
(shortest match)
b{2,3} matches at least 2 times
and not more than 3
b{2,3}? matches at least 2 times
and not more than 3 (shortest
match)
abbc abbbc abbbbc abbbbbc
abbc abbbc abbbbc abbbbbc
abbc abbbc abbbbc abbbbbc
abbc abbbc abbbbc abbbbbc
abbc abbbc abbbbc abbbbbc
abbc abbbc abbbbc abbbbbc
Character:
Text tab metacharacter:
GREP tab metacharacter:
Tab Character
^t
\t
End of Paragraph
^p
\r
Forced Line Break
^n
\n
Any Page Number
^#
~#
Current Page Number
^N
~N
Next Page Number
^X
~X
Previous Page Number
^V
~V
* Any Variable
^v
~v
Section Marker
^x
~x
* Anchored Object Marker
^a
~a
* Footnote Reference Marker
^F
~F
* Index Marker
^I
~I
Expression
Search string
Sample text
Matches (in bold)