Is there any workaround for Find and Replace being applied to the entire workbook?

Responding to second post:

"Use selection for Find" will be greyed unless you have some text selected. If you have txt selected, command-E or clicking the (no longer grey) Use Selection for Find will place the selected text in the Find box.

The same is true for "Use Selection for Replace." If you have text selected, clicking the menu item will copy that text to the Replace with box.

Responding to initial post:

"I want to search and replace all space chars within a single selection. This is typically an entire column or sheet, but not every tab."

Some vocabulary issues here:

• You can select a "single column" (or a single row, or a block of cells on a Table. You can select a single Table or multiple tables on a Sheet.
• You cannot select an 'entire Sheet' (except to copy or duplicae it), although you can select all of the Table(s) and other objects on a single sheet.
• A "Tab" is a label space holding the name of the Sheet it is attached to, displayed in a row of tabs across the top of the document window. Clicking on a tab brings its Sheet to the front, Clicking on a Sheet will 'select ' it only to the extent that pressing command-C will copy the sheet's format and content to the clipboard, or pressing command-D will duplicate it and its content.

Find/Replace always searches the whole document, and cannot be set to a limited area search.

To limit Find replace to a single column of a Table or to a single Table or to the contents of a single sheet, you can:

Select the column or Table.

Copy

Open a new Blank Numbers document.

Paste the contents of the column or of the copied Table into the default table that comes with the template.

Perform the Search/Replace action on this document.

Copy the edited contents.

Return to the original document, select the top left cell of the area from which you originally copied the contents.

Paste.

Regards,

Barry

PS: You can use the Provide Numbers Feedback menu item in the Numbers menu to make a Feature Enhancement request regarding restricting Find/Replace to a selected area.

Considering that the behaviour of Search/Replace has been essentially the same since Numbers introduction in late 2007, I would not expect to see a speedy imposition of that feature.

B.

I agree they need a more useful Find and Replace that is tailored to Numbers.

You can do a find/replace one at a time if you use the button "Replace and Find" instead of "Replace All" or "Replace". It will move from cell to cell. Stop when it moves to the next sheet.

The greyed out menu items are because you do not have the proper thing selected. I have never used most of those commands. I see that if you select a space character in a cell and hit cmd E, it will "select it" as the thing to replace. If you use Cmd G, it will move from cell to cell finding each space and then you can hit Delete to get rid of each one, one at a time. I note that a double space will be found only once, though and it will move on, leaving the second space there.