Find & Replace

The Find & Replace feature provides powerful text search and replacement functionality, helping you quickly locate and modify text throughout your transcript.

Opening Find & Replace

Open the Find & Replace panel:

• Press Cmd/Ctrl+F (find only)
• Press Cmd/Ctrl+H (find and replace)
• Or go to Edit → Find & Replace

Finding Text

Basic Search

1. Type your search term in the Find field
2. Matches are highlighted in the document
3. The current match is highlighted distinctly
4. Match count shows "X of Y matches"

Navigation

Move between matches:

When Find opens or the search term changes, the current match is the nearest match at or after the live editor cursor. Search wraps to the first match in the document only when no later match follows the cursor. After a single Replace, Find continues after the replaced span. Searches scoped to a selection continue to start at the first in-range match.

When you reach the end of the document while navigating, search wraps to the beginning (and vice versa).

Search Options

Fine-tune your search with these options:

Replacing Text

Single Replace

1. Enter your search term
2. Enter the replacement text
3. Navigate to the match you want to replace
4. Click Replace to replace the current match

Replace All

Replace every occurrence at once:

1. Enter search and replacement terms
2. Click Replace All
3. For many replacements (50+), a preview is shown first
4. All changes are grouped in a single undo operation

When you open Find & Replace with Cmd/Ctrl+F without selecting text, Replace All keeps the panel open, clears both fields and the match count, and focuses Find for your next search. A whitespace-only selection behaves the same way.

If you selected a word or other non-whitespace text before opening the panel, Replace All still closes the panel and returns focus to the transcript. Changing the search scope does not change this opening behavior. Replace (single match) always leaves the panel open. Press Escape or click X to close the panel.

Sentence spacing

In a legal project whose active template explicitly uses two-space sentence spacing, Replace and Replace All add a missing second ordinary space only at newly changed, recognized sentence boundaries when Autocorrect is on. For example, replacing Yes, with Yes. before next produces Yes. next.

Replace All checks only the changed boundaries of its replacements, not the rest of the transcript. Existing two or more spaces, quoted endings, abbreviations and initials, decimals, ellipses, tabs, nonbreaking spaces, and Q/A or speaker-label gaps stay unchanged. A sentence end merely included unchanged in a replacement is not normalized. For very large, substantially changed replacements where a new boundary cannot be identified within the editor's bounded comparison, the replacement still succeeds but automatic spacing is left unchanged. Long replacements with a small change surrounded by unchanged text can still receive the correction.

The correction shares the replacement's undo operation and is tracked when Track Changes is on. To opt out, switch Autocorrect off in Tools → Editor Settings → Autocorrect. Auto-Capitalize is separate. General projects and templates without this policy are unchanged; saving and reloading do not run a spacing pass.

For untouched AI-draft, imported or pasted text, DOCX export sentence spacing can correct recognized single-space boundaries in the exported copy without changing your editor or stored transcript. It requires a legal project, an active two-space template, loaded display settings and Autocorrect explicitly on. This does not broaden Replace or Replace All: their edit-time correction still applies only to newly changed boundaries.

Case-Preserving Replace

When enabled, replacement text matches the case pattern of the original:

Search Scope

Full Document Search

By default, Find & Replace searches the entire document.

Selection Search

To search within a selection:

1. Select a portion of text (20+ words)
2. Open Find & Replace
3. Search is automatically scoped to selection
4. Click Search all to search the full document again

Regular Expressions

Enable regex mode for powerful pattern matching:

Common Patterns

Examples

Visual Feedback

Match Highlighting

• Current match - Amber/orange highlight with outline
• Other matches - Light orange highlight
• Selection boundary - Dashed border around search scope

Match Count

The panel shows:

• Total number of matches found
• Current position (e.g., "3 of 15 matches")
• Indication when wrapped to beginning/end

Keyboard Shortcuts

Best Practices

Standardizing Terminology

Use Find & Replace to standardize terms across your transcript:

Find: "Mr Smith"
Replace: "Mr. Smith"
Options: Match case

Fixing Common Errors

Correct recurring transcription errors:

Find: "gonna"
Replace: "going to"

Speaker Label Cleanup

Standardize speaker labels:

Find: "S1:"
Replace: "MR. JONES:"

Troubleshooting

No Matches Found

If your search returns no results:

1. Check spelling of search term
2. Try disabling "Match case"
3. Disable "Whole word" for partial matches
4. Check regex syntax if enabled

Regex Errors

If you see "Invalid regular expression":

1. Check for unescaped special characters
2. Ensure parentheses are balanced
3. Try a simpler pattern first

Slow Search

For very long documents:

1. Search is optimized but may take a moment
2. Large regex patterns may be slower
3. Consider searching within a selection