The Find and Replace palette can be invoked by using the shortcut “Ctrl + F” or it can be selected from the Edit Menu and choosing “Find and Replace” option. Legacy users may find that, in Captivate 4 from being a dialog, it is a palette in Captivate 5 which can be docked in any of the panels or left floating anywhere on your screen.

The find and replace feature is highly effective in global text changes in your project (For example, to replace all instances of “100$” to “64£” in your project).  But text changes are just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with the Find and Replace palette. You can use it to search for Images, Videos, Objects and Styles in Captivate 5. Ever wanted to search for the video you inserted somewhere in your 100-slide project, in times like that, Find and replace palette will be your time saviour.

To do this, you have to select “Slide Video” in the “Search in” Drop down box. And click on Find All. The find all will show the result in rows in the find results area at the bottom of the controls. Here, you can select the slide video result, it automatically takes you to the slide having the video and selects the video for you to modify it.

The Search in Category allows you to search objects of a certain category. They are classified as

• All Object Types
• Text Captions
• Button
• Text Animation
• Rollover Caption
• Highlight Box
• Image
• Rollover Image
• Zoom Area
• Mouse
• Slidelet
• Click Box
• Text Entry Box
• Flash Video
• Placeholder
• Animation
• Line
• FreeForm Polygon
• Oval
• Rectangle
• Slide Video

These categories allow you to search more efficiently in your project. To find all those “Click Boxes” or “Text Animations” in your project or all the “Placeholders” in CPTL files, select the required category and just proceed.

Categories such as Text Captions, Button, Rollover Caption, Oval, Rectangle allow you to search the text in them. If you want to search in all the text in your project, it would be wise to select “All Object Types” in the Search in Category. Other categories show up the item’s name in the results area.

There are also various options which one can choose from.

• Whole Word – It searches only if the word is a whole word. For Example, you can replace all “hi” to “bye” but “hit” wouldn’t get replaced to “byet”
• Match Case – It takes into account the case of the text when finding and replacing. For Example, it finds “Chair” but not “chair”.
• Quiz Slides – This check box is to specify whether to include Question Slides in the search or not.
• Hidden Items – This check box is to specify whether to include hidden slides and objects in the search or not.
• Locked Items – This check box is to specify whether to include locked slides and objects in the search or not.

You can do the following actions

• Find Next – finds the next correct match from your current cursor position and slide number and sets the selection to that object
• Find All – Lists all the instances of objects/Text based on the criteria selected.
• Replace – The selected found text is replaced with the text given in the Replace field
• Replace All – All instances of the text in the Find field is replaced with the text given in the Replace field.

One more thing which you can do with the palette, is to narrow down the search by selecting the required “Object Style” for objects.

One such usage would be to find all objects of a certain style, say “Style1”.For this,

• Choose “All Object Types” or certain Item type in “Search in” category.
• Select  “Style1” in the Style category
• Click on “Find All” Button.
• The results will be shown in the results area from which you can click the required row.
• It would select the required object on stage and Properties palette will also be updated thereby enabling you to change any appearance of that object.

All results of Find all will also show the object style of that item, if available, along with the object’s text/name.

Find and replace palette will help you save time, especially in large projects.