In Word 2007, how to find&replace using wildcards for find without replacing the substring defined by the wildcards?

Question

I have a document where there are many instances of two pieces of information on a single line, like

 assigned to John Doe, estimate 2 days

and I want them to appear on two different lines, like

assigned to: John Doe
estimate: 2 days

but when I tried using wildcards, I didn't go far. My best guess was: find assigned to*, estimate*\preplace with assigned to:*\p estimate:*\p and of course, this did not produce the desired result, but

assigned to:*
estimate:*

How do I specify a wildcard in Find and direct Replace to keep the same content which was found with the wildcard, but changing the content around it?

Answer 1

You'll have to use Regexp.

Search expression:

assigned to (<*>) (<*>)

Replace expression:

assigned to: \1 \2 ^p

So that takes care of splitting the name. For the estimates:

Search expression

, estimate (<*>) (<*>)

Replace expression

estimate: \1 \2

---

Test case:

Search for assigned to (<*>) (<*>) and replace with assigned to: \1 \2 ^p

Search for , estimate (<*>) (<*>) and replace with estimate: \1 \2

Answer 2

you can use 2 find and replaces which worked for me, one that was Find Assigned to and replace Assigned To:

the second find , estimate and replace ^13estimate:

^13 will add a CRLF