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Please help me find and replace a text string in a batch of Word docs. Is this possible with Shortcuts? My failed attempt could only grab one file and did not find/replace any text. If not Shortcuts, how could I do this with Automator? Thank you!
novice, macbook air 2018, monterey OS, many hours lost and defeated
Big fail with Automator attempt too.
MacBook Air
We are back to my previous Feb 12 reply.
Check if Automator has a Documents Library introduced by Microsoft 365 or either Office 2019/2021 for Mac. If it does, you will need to use the Open Word Document, and the Find and Replace Text in Word documents actions, as shown in that preceding link. The only other means of externally changing content in a Word document would be via AppleScript if Microsoft provides scripting dictionary support for that purpose. No other workflow or scripting solution can do this, other than some incantation of Word basic.
I do not have Word installed, so I cannot create and test an Automator or Shortcuts workflow solution to Find/Replace text in a Word document. None of the scripts that I have posted can perform find/replace in a Word document. Converting the Word document to PDF won't solve batch-changing text in Word documents, and introduces separate programming challenges.
VikingOSX, I have been learning from your many helpful posts for days now! Grateful for your succinct and informative replies.
As a workaround, I am using some of your brilliant shell script to open each docx and save as PDFs through Shortcuts. However, I've been unsuccessful with file filtering, moving and closing the files after conversion. Any suggestions on how to make this work? Thank you!
Just a footnote to my previous post that Microsoft discontinued Automator actions beginning with Office 2016 for Mac, so it really is rolling a joint in AppleScript.
Word documents are a renamed zip container (.docx) containing several XML documents. You will need to open each document in MS Word, and provided Word's AppleScript scripting definitions allow it. programmatically tell Word to find and replace the appropriate strings. Until you do this, nothing in Automator or Shortcuts will solve your find/replace issue to batch process Word documents.
Your going to have to find some way of editing a word document...
-- open office
-- LibreOffice.app
-- pages
You will then need to learn the accompling script language.
Robert
Find and Replace text in batch of Word docs
