Word find/replace: add space to postal code with wildcards

Question

Using the “Find and Replace” dialog in Microsoft Word 2003, I want to search a list of addresses for postal codes (Canadian) that do not have a space in them, e.g.,

M2N3X6
L4C2A9
K5G1S7

and put a space in the middle:

M2N 3X6
L4C 2A9
K5G 1S7

This should be simple, but I am having a bit of trouble with the "replace with" part: I've figured out that in the Find field I enter [A-Z][0-9][A-Z][0-9][A-Z][0-9], but in the Replace box, how do I add the space in the middle, retaining the characters that are there? I thought it would be something like \1\2\3 \4\5\6, but that's not working

Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

The \1 etc. replace expressions, and in order to specify that something is an expression, you enclose it in (). So you need

([A-Z])([0-9])([A-Z])([0-9])([A-Z])([0-9])

Then

\1\2\3 \4\5\6

should work. I think there is a limit on the number of expressions you can have (9, perhaps)

Answer 2

I can’t find any way (in Microsoft Word’s “Find and Replace” dialog) to do full sub-regex replacement, the way you can in programs like sed.  But I did find a multi-step solution to your problem.  First, identify a string that does not appear in your data and does not contain any characters that are special in Word’s “Find and Replace” (e.g., ‘@’ or ‘#’).  (Alternatively, use them but escape them.)  It can be a single character, like ‘|’, so long as it doesn’t appear in your data.  I’ll assume that you’ve chosen “|”.  Now,

1. Do a search for [A-Z][0-9][A-Z][0-9][A-Z][0-9] and replace with ^&|.  This will tag each non-conformant postal code with a trailing “|”.
2. Search for [0-9][A-Z][0-9]| and replace with  ^& (with a leading space).  This inserts the space where you want it.
3. Then search for all occurrences of | and replace with nothing.

You can do this without using wildcard mode:

1. ^$^#^$^#^$^# → ^&|.
2. ^#^$^#| →  ^&                (or even ^?^?^?| →  ^&).
3. | → nothing.

Note that ^$ is equivalent to [A-Za-z], so if your situation is case-sensitive, I guess you need to use the “wildcards”.

Answer 3

Super simple way: use the "Text to Columns" function in Excel and then use the CONCATENATE formula to recombine with a space in the middle. The formula would be =CONCATENATE(A1," ",B1)