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Page: Find and Replace
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Backup and Restore Characters Comments Editor Extension Development Extensions Find and Replace Getting Started Glossary Home Importing Manuscripts Install Outline Analysis Outlines Plots Projects Publishing Readability Analysis Reference Panel Review Mode Settings Updates World Building
1 Find and Replace
Gwen Gullett edited this page 2026-08-08 13:33:42 -04:00
Table of contents

Find & Replace

Find & Replace searches the prose of your outline; either the node you have open, or the whole outline at once, and lets you jump between matches or replace them.

Opening it

Like Reference, Comments, and Readability Analysis, Find & Replace shares the single right-hand panel slot: opening it closes whichever of those was open.

Search options

Two toggles control matching, and both reset to their defaults every time you open the panel (they aren't remembered between sessions):

  • Partial (default) or Exact (whole-word only)
  • Case-insensitive (default) or Case-sensitive

Search looks at the text as you'd read it, not the raw Markdown underneath, so searching "brown fox" finds it whether or not it's bolded or italicized in the source. Node titles are not searched or replaced, only prose content.

Scope: current node vs. whole outline

  • Opening the panel from the Editor or Review defaults to searching the current node only.
  • Opening it from the Outline tree always searches the whole outline (there's no single "current node" to narrow to there).

From the Editor, you can switch the scope at any time. Once you do, it's sticky for that session; navigating to a different node (by jumping to a match, or manually) doesn't reset it back to "current node." It only re-defaults the next time you close and reopen the panel.

In Review Mode there's no scope toggle: it searches exactly what's on screen, the reviewed node plus all of its descendants, as a single combined document. Review is read-only, so replace controls aren't shown there at all.

Results and navigation

  • Matches are listed in document order, 50 per page, with the total count always shown (e.g. "137 matches").
  • Each result shows the node it belongs to and a snippet of surrounding text with the match highlighted.
  • Click a result to jump straight to it.
  • Next / Previous buttons (or Enter / Shift+Enter) step through the full match list, not just the current page, flipping pages automatically as needed.
  • Jumping to a match in a different node navigates there first, then scrolls to and highlights the match once it's loaded.

Replacing

The Replace field is hidden until you toggle it on.

  • Replace applies to the currently active match, removes it from the list, and moves on to the next one.
  • Replace All asks for confirmation first, since a bulk replace across many nodes can't be undone as a single action. Once confirmed, it works through every affected node, saving each one as it goes.

If a match's underlying text changes out from under it, for example you hand-edit that passage while the panel is still open, it's automatically dropped from the results.

Notes

  • A whole-outline search reads every node's content in one pass, so a very large outline may take a moment to return results.
  • A match that straddles a formatting boundary (say, text that's only partly bold) may be found by search but isn't always highlightable in the live editor; this is a known limitation.