Find text in the current document or entire project

Use the Find/Replace command to find some specified text either in the current document or in your entire project.

For this task, a document is any one of the several screens and worksheets that make up your project. If you want to search the tags database, use the filter tools in the Project Tags Datasheet View. For more information, see Sort or filter the rows in a worksheet.

When you create a new project, a search database is also created for it. This database contains an index of every document in your project — that is, every project screen, script worksheet, task worksheet, tags datasheet, and so on — and it allows you to quickly find all occurrences of the specified text. Each time you edit and save a document, the search database is also updated.

Find text in documents:

1. If you want to find text in a single document, make sure that document is open in the Screen/Worksheet Editor. If more than one document is open, click the tab of the document you want in order to bring it to the front.

   It is now the "current document".

2. On the ribbon, go to the Home tab, and then in the Clipboard group, select Find/Replace.

   The Find/Replace dialog box is displayed.

3. In the Find/Replace dialog box, go to the Find tab.

   The Find tab of the dialog box is displayed.

   

   Whenever you use the Find/Replace command, it synchronizes the search database with the current state of the project. That synchronization is shown as a progress bar in the dialog box, immediately after the dialog box is displayed. The synchronization should be finished quickly, but in some cases — for example, if you are using the command for the first time in a large, existing project — it will take more time. You can proceed with finding text before the synchronization is finished, but if you do, the results might be inaccurate or incomplete.

4. In the Find What box, type or select the text that you want to find.

   Previous texts are saved in the list. To see the list, click the down arrow on the right.

5. In the Look In box, select either Current Document or Entire Project.

   If there is no current document (as determined in Step 1), Entire Project will be selected by default.

6. To find the first occurrence of the specified text in the current document, select Find Next.

   (This works only for script and task worksheets, not for project screens.)

   If the text is found, it is highlighted in the document. Select Find Next again to find the next occurrence, if there is one. When it reaches the end of the document, it starts over from the beginning.

   If the text is not found, a message is displayed to notify you of that.

7. To find all occurrences of the specified text, either in the current document or in your entire project, select Find All.

   If the text is found, the results are displayed in the Find Results tab of the Output window, in the development environment.

   For example, if you search for all occurrences of Industries_Water.Pressure in the PC Demo project that is distributed with this software, you see the following results:

   

   Each line of the results represents a separate occurrence of the specified text, and it comprises the following information:

   • The location of the document, in the Project Explorer, that contains the specified text;

   • The location of the specified text in that document (for example, the screen object and object property, the column and row in a worksheet); and

   • The specified text itself, given in context (for example, how the specified text is used as a variable in a line of VBScript).

   If the specified text is found in a document that is password-protected, only the location of the document is displayed in the results. The other information is not available. The specified text can be found even in a password-protected document because the document was indexed when it was saved.

8. To go to an occurrence of the specified text, do one of the following:

   • Double-click that line in the results; or

   • Right-click that line in the results, and then select Open file on the shortcut menu.

   The corresponding document is opened in the Screen/Worksheet Editor, in the development environment, and the occurrence is highlighted.