Adobe InDesign - Manual (Page 315)

third groupings (open and close quotes) are removed C. Character style specified
This example searches only for single words enclosed in quotation marks. If you want to search for phrases enclosed in parentheses, add wildcard
expressions, such as (\s*.*\w*\d*), which looks for spaces, characters, word characters, and digits.
Example 2: Phone numbers
InDesign includes a number of search presets that you can choose from the Queries menu. For example, you can choose the Phone Number
Conversion query, which looks like this:
\(?(\d\d\d)\)?[-. ]?(\d\d\d)[-. ]?(\d\d\d\d)
Phone numbers in the United States can appear in a variety of formats, such as 206-555-3982, (206) 555-3982, 206.555.3982, and 206 555 3982.
This string looks for any of these variations. The first three digits (\d\d\d) of the phone number may or may not be enclosed in parentheses, so a
question mark appears after the parentheses: \(? and \)?. Note that the backslash \ indicates that the actual parenthesis is being searched for and
that it’s not part of a subexpression. The brackets [ ] locate any character within them, so in this case, [-. ] finds either a hyphen, a period, or a
space. The question mark after the brackets indicate that the items within it are optional in the search. Finally, the digits are enclosed in
parentheses, which signify groupings that can be referred to in the Change To field.
You can edit the grouping references in the Change To field to suit your needs. For example, you could use these expressions:
206.555.3982 = $1.$2.$3
206-555-3982 = $1-$2-$3
(206) 555-3982 = ($1) $2-$3
206 555 3982 = $1 $2 $3
Additional GREP examples
Experiment with the examples in this table to learn more about GREP searches.
Expression Search string Sample text Matches (in bold)
Class of characters
[ ]
[abc]
Finds the letter a, b, or c.
Maria cuenta bien. Mariacuentabien.
Beginning of paragraph
^
^~_.+
This searches the
beginning of the paragraph
(^) for an em dash (~_)
followed by any character (
. ) one or more times (+).
“We saw—or at least we
think we saw—a purple
cow.”
—Konrad Yoes
“We saw—or at least we
think we saw—a purple
cow.”
—Konrad Yoes
Negative lookahead
(?!pattern)
InDesign (?!CS.*?)
The negative lookahead
matches the search string
only if it is not followed by
the specified pattern.
InDesign, InDesign 2.0,
InDesign CS, and InDesign
CS2 InDesign, InDesign 2.0,
InDesign CS, and InDesign
CS2
Positive lookahead
(?=pattern)
InDesign (?=CS.*?)
The positive lookahead
matches the search string
only if it is followed by the
specified pattern.
Use similar patterns for
negative lookbehinds (?
pattern) and positive
lookbehinds (?<=pattern).
InDesign, InDesign 2.0,
InDesign CS, and InDesign
CS2 InDesign, InDesign 2.0,
InDesign CS, and
InDesign CS2
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