My Question is, can Find & Replace be used to replace a WORD with a new FORMATTED WORD in Pages v12.1?
Let’s say I have a paragraph written in Black Color, and this paragraph text has a recurring word “James”. I want to find this word and then replace it with “James” but in Red Color, so that all instances of “James” turns Red Color.
Microsoft has ADVANCED FIND AND REPLACE function, but Pages v12.1 doesn’t have any similar function. As a result, currently I am manually selecting the recurring word and applying the new Color. This causes a lot of time to be spent.
—–
Nirmal Kumar Gali
You can't do it with a single command, since Find and Replace doesn't work with formatting. But it can be done quickly this way:
Replace James in the first instance and set the color. Then select it and copy it.
Then use Edit, Find to find the next one. It will now be selected. Command+v to paste the new formatted text in place of it.
Then Command+g to Find Next. Command+v to replace it. Continue with Command+g, Command+v and you'll be done pretty quickly.
For bonus points, when you create that first James, set it to a special Character Style. Then each time you paste James it will be in that special Character Style. After that, you can now change the first James and apply that to the Character Style and all of them will change. See https://macmost.com/using-character-styles-in-pages.html
Once you have master Character Styles, then try to use them in these situations in the future. For instance, if you want every name in a document to use a style, just use that Character Style for names from the start. Then you can change all names in your document very easily.
Thanks, Gary for the workarounds.