I do interviews in chatrooms. The chat text logging software
unfortunately provides the Q&A between me and the interview subject in
private, but ALSO includes all chat which appears in the main public
chat window. I edit this in MS Word 2003. I want to be able to do a
find and replace that will rid the log of all the text from the
chatroom. Each line of public chat begins with the user name inside
brackets like this: [george22] his words in public chat follow .... I
would love to eliminate every such line typed by dozens of chat
members through the find and replace process. I can provide samples on
request. Help?

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Request for Question Clarification by maniac-ga on 19 Sep 2006 20:01 PDT

Hello Mikegene1,

Is the pattern something like

^P[george22]*^P

Where:
^P - matches the paragraph mark (or end of line)
[george22] - matches that literal phrase
* - matches zero or more letters

and replacing with something like
^P

Or is the find & replace pattern something more complicated?

In addition, are the names something you want a macro to detect
"automatically" (presumably ignoring you and the interview subject) or
would a series of "replace all" commands be sufficient to answer the
question?

Posting an example & the desired result would also help greatly in
preparing a precise solution.

  --Maniac

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Clarification of Question by mikegene1-ga on 24 Sep 2006 19:58 PDT

Hi thank you for responding, please pardon my delay. Below is an
actual example of a problem. The paragraphs beginning with
Female#2120: and Interviewer: must be preserved. I wish to get rid of
all of the others.

Female#2120: ive been thinking about it 
[fam4u] he was a young guy really 
Interviewer: OK and what was that like for you? 
[fam4u] gaawd it was so HOT today..
Female#2120: it was amazing
Interviewer: What did you like most about it? 
[sue_2000] anyone from MA? 
Interviewer: Did he tell you about this site? 
Female#2120: yes

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 24 Sep 2006 20:06 PDT

Seems to me you can:

--Paste all the lines in Excel.

--number all the lines:

A  B
 
1  Female#2120: ive been thinking about it 
2  [fam4u] he was a young guy really 
3  Interviewer: OK and what was that like for you? 
4  [fam4u] gaawd it was so HOT today..
5  Female#2120: it was amazing

etc

--Sort colum B alphabetically, so that all the lines beginning with
brackets drop to the bottom.

--Delete all the rows with bracket lines en masse

--resort on Column A to arrange the lines back in numerical order


It sounds more cumbersome than it really is.  Give it a try, and let
me know what you think.


pafalafa-ga

Mikegene1,
Thanks for the question...

This is not a difficult one
Here are the steps 
Step 1: Copy paste the content(if not already done)
Step 2: Go to Replace(Edit->Replace)
Step 3: In opened window there will be a checkbox use wild card if not
then click on More then check Use Wild Card.
Step 4: Now On Find Text Box Type the quoted text "\[*\]" In replace
if you will not type any thing then it will ok, if not just press a
space in Replace Text Box.
Step 5: Do Replace All 9 if you don't have fear that the inner content
will be removed. I think there is : or - in log file u can try finding
"\[*\]:" or "\[*\] :" or "\[*\]-" or "\[*\]:" . {U can click on
special to look for various other option. Always To use a character
with predefine role we use '\' character. More information is
available on Microsoft office online.
Step 6: Replace all the words.
Let me know if this helped you..

e.g You have a chat syntax in word 2003
[Ram] :I think the first one is really difficult
[Shyam] :But I have a method to solved that problem
then on Find Text Box(Assuming checkbox "Use Wild Card" checked
then write on find text box
\[*\] :
and don't write anything in Replace then after replacing text will be 

I think the first one is really difficult
But I have a method to solved that problem

You can in fact do this quite simply in Word.

1. Go to Edit > Replace.
2. If the dialog box does not have a section at the bottom with severl
checkboxes, press the "More>>" button.
3. Make sure "Use wildcards" is checked.
4. Enter "^13\[*^13" (without the quote marks) into the "Find What"
box and enter "^13" (without the quote marks) into the "Replace With"
box.
5. Press the Replace All button.

This will remove any line beginning with a [ character.

The search string works as follows: When "Use wildcards" is checked,
^13 matches a paragraph marker, \[ matches a [ character and * matches
any text, so we're looking for new paragraph (line) starting with a [
and then selecting all text up to the next paragraph. Since we have
two paragraph markers in the find string we need to replace it with
one paragraph marker so we don't join all the lines together. ;-)

p.s. deepeshdeomurari-ga - your solution removes the name tags from
the public comments, but the actual desired result is to delete all
public comments while retaining the private (interview) lines.