CorelDRAW's Find and Replace docker makes it easy to scour a document to
find objects with specific properties, names or styles. Objects and text can
also have various properties replaced and text strings can be found and
replaced as well. Before we get started, if you're watching this video on YouTube
you'll find a link in the description below that will take you to our tutorial
page on Corel's Discovery Center. Here you can also download a written copy of this tutorial.
I have this document open with several circles and polygons of
different colors, all of which have transparency blended fills. I'll show how
to perform a search that will find and select only specific objects. Find and
Replace is now in its own docker. I can find it in the Window > Dockers menu or
choose Edit > Find and Replace or press Ctrl + F. I'll start with the first option,
Find Objects, and I want to search by Property. The drop-down has some commonly
used searches such as Overprinted Outlines or Text with RGB Fills. Clicking
the folder icon opens the folder where these searches are stored. This
searchable list of files can come in handy if the list of saved searches is
long. I'll create a custom search. I'll click Add Query. This opens the Find
Objects window in which I can choose the objects and properties I want to find.
I can look for Object Types such as shapes or text, different types of Fills or
Outlines and Special Effects. In this example I'll look for polygons that have
a uniform fill. I'll click OK and my search criteria are now listed in the
docker. I can click the Find Next arrow to scroll through every filled polygon,
or click Find All to select them all at once in my Objects docker.
I can see that all polygons are selected. I can change the properties of them all
at once, like giving them a different fill color and adding outlines. I'll undo
and go back to the Find and Replace docker to narrow the current search. I'll
click Edit Query to specify what kind of polygon I want to find. I'll click the
Polygons object type, click Sides and set
the number to 3 so that only triangles
will be found. Other search filters I could use here are Width and Height.
I'll check Ellipses as well so that the circles will also be included in the
search. I'll also highlight Uniform Color Fill, check the box to search by color,
and for color I'll use the eyedropper to pick up the red color. Now when I click
Find All I get just the red triangles and red circles, which can now get
outlines. Now say I want to find all yellow triangles. I'll select one then
click From Selection on the docker. When I click Find All, all identical
objects who share all of the same properties will be found. Searches can be
saved to create a new query. I'll first click Reset then I'll click Add. I want
to find all CMYK fills so I'll check general color model under fills and
check CMYK. To save this search I'll click the Save icon and name the search
CMYK fills. Now I'll be able to find this search in my drop down. After running the
search all of the purple objects are selected because the other fills are RGB.
I'll use the Properties palette to change the CMYK fill to RGB. In addition
to searching by property, I can also search for names or styles. A name search
finds objects that are assigned a name, not objects listed by the generic names
assigned when created. I'll right-click on this polygon and choose Rename and
call it "purple triangle." Now when I search for objects with the full name
"purple triangle" the named object will be selected. To demonstrate a search by
style I'll make a change to one of the shapes. With this triangle selected I'll
open the Properties palette and change the transparency to a bitmap pattern.
I'll right-click on the triangle and choose Object Style >New Style From >
Transparency. I'll name this style "cloud." I can now see this style in my Object
Styles palette and I'll drag it into a few other shapes. Back in Find and
Replace I'll search for this style and my cloud style objects are selected.
I could also search by type; in this case transparency.
Now if I edit the cloud style properties, all cloud objects will be affected. For
another style search I have some text added with two different character
styles. I can search for everything with the Arial black style and with those
objects now selected I can apply the other style.
Note that searches won't select objects that are inside of groups. I have all of
the diamond shapes inside a group and my search is for all polygons.
When I click Find All, I have the choice to either break up the groups where
polygons are found or if I click "no" to run the search without the grouped
objects. Now let's look at replacing objects, and here nothing is grouped. I'll
replace objects by color, finding ones with fill that matched "blue" and
replacing with green. Clicking the arrow selects each object found by the search
and I can click Replace to replace colors one by one or I can click Replace All.
Replacing objects by color model or palette is also a good way to make a
page wide change from say CMYK fill to RGB, applying this change to all types of
fills. I can also replace objects by outline properties or text properties.
In this 2 page document I want to replace everything that has Palatino Linotype font.
I could also specify weight and size or leave these blank to find
everything with this font. I'll replace with a script font. This works across
both paragraph and artistic text and I can replace one text object at a time or
all at once. Because search and replace works on one page at a time I'll open
the second page and make the same replacement. If I want to change the
color of all text with this new font I'll go back to Find Objects. This time
I'll look for artistic and paragraph text with a mono type font.
I'll find all and use the eyedropper to replace the color. I'll switch pages and
run the same search and change. The last option on this docker is Find and
Replace Text. I'll use the Find option to see how many times
"Acme" appears. I have several instances across both pages of this document. I'll
click the Replace option, enter the new name of ABC and replace all the all-caps.
ABC is used everywhere, even in the website name, so I'll undo and check
Match Case. Now capital letters are used where there were capital letters before.
This brings us to the end of this tutorial on Find and Replace in
CorelDRAW. If you've been watching this video on YouTube, you'll find a link in
the description below that will take you to our tutorial page
on Corel's Discovery Center. Here you can also download a written copy of this
tutorial to try out the steps yourself.