Use the Regular Expression Option to Find Special Characters

Use the Regular Expression Option to Find Special Characters

Power users of Microsoft Word will be familiar with the advanced Find options, commonly referred to as "caret codes" because they are composed of the caret symbol followed by a letter. For example, the caret code "^t" can be used to find a tab. AutoScript Desktop has a similar feature with much more power and usefulness than those codes.

Turn on Find's Regular Expression Option

The first step is to open a job in ASD, and then use the default hotkey [Ctrl]+[F] or click the [Find] button on the home tab to open the Find tool. Then, from the down-facing arrow next to the Find text box, click to check "Regular expression".

Now a whole new world is open to you. You can use the code \d to find any single digit or the code \d+ to find strings of digits. Following are regular expressions (regex) equivalent to the carat codes you'll find in MS Word.
REGEX
ITEM
CARET CODE
\n paragraph mark ^p
\t tab character ^t
. any character ^?
\d any digit ^#
[a-zA-Z] any letter ^$
\^ caret character ^^
\u00B6 paragraph character (¶) ^v
\u2014 em dash (—) ^+
\u2013 en dash (–) ^=
\u000C manual page break ^m
\u2011 nonbreaking hyphen ^~
\u00a0 nonbreaking space ^s
\u00ad optional hyphen ^-
\s white space (space, tab, newline) ^w
\ ( add space after \ ) - space character n/a


If you'd like to learn more about using regular expressions, feel free to reach out to our support team using the Request Help link above. They are a powerful feature available to you in AutoScript Desktop. Let us help you make the most of that feature.

    • Related Articles

    • Use the Regular Expression Option to Find Non-ASCII Characters

      If you're exporting your transcript to ASCII for use in final production software, you'll need to ensure there are no special characters in the transcript. Any non-ASCII characters will display as a character code in ASCII files if you include them. ...

    • How to Find Number Words in Your Transcript

      The Problem You are proofreading a transcript in AutoScript Desktop (ASD). You need to find all of the places where a number was spelled out to make sure the transcript adheres to your agency's style guidelines. The transcript is over 100 pages long ...

    • ASD Word Documents and Templates free-for-use

      Please feel free to download and use any of our free-for-use Word documents and Templates for use with AutoScript Desktop. 

    • ASD - Cloud Layouts

      The Cloud Layouts feature saves steps in the process of producing a transcript. It's also a useful way to back up your layouts in our cloud. Enable Cloud Layouts The first step you need to take is to enable this feature. CLICK HERE for full ...

    • AutoScript Desktop Release Notes - March 2, 2023

      A VoiceScript.ai Product for the Legal Market Introduction AutoScript is the industry’s premier Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) solution designed exclusively for the legal industry. Developed by VoiceScript, a legal technology company, AutoScript ...