Exclude word when searching in Notes

Question

In Notes, how do I search for all the notes that don’t have a certain word in it (in this case “UNS”)? I’ve played around with regex a bit in the search box, but I can’t figure it out.

Answer 1

A possible work-around for the original request could be to make any desired filters to the notes in Paratext first, then from the Notes list window select Edit: Copy all notes and paste into a text editor and perform the regex search there.

Alternatively depending on the need, in Paratext one could search for the certain word (e.g. UNS) and then assign the notes that result from that search to a custom category (probably manually). Once that is done, a custom filter could then be used to exclude that new custom category of notes. If UNS is uniquely used for e.g. comments by an uninitiated speaker, that would be a good use case for custom note categories.

Comments

I like this idea. It also suggests that if the project had a “UNS” note tag, then such project notes could be distinguished from the others by using this note tag in the first place. Paratext sorts by note tags very easily. Below is a screenshot of the Notes tab in the Project Properties where some custom note tags have been added.

image712×379 35.1 KB

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Another way to make project notes more searchable is to setup a hashtag system. The following video describes how this can be done.

Vimeo

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Would the hashtag system allow me to look for notes that don’t have #UNS, for example?

Answer 2

Try this expression: (in this example, “said” is the word to exclude)

regex:^(?!.*said).*

Comments

so for your example:

regex:^(?!.*uns).*

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sewhite:

regex:^(?!.*uns).*

Thanks, but doesn’t work–on either 9.2.102.13 or 9.2.102.14.

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You’re right.

That Regex does work in the text search to exclude verses with the undesired word.

I have submitted this as a problem report to Paratext developers, that the regex in the notes list does not work.

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I’m kind of proud of myself that I (accidentally) found a bug in Paratext.

Answer 3

So, unfortunately, I don’t think this could ever work well when searching notes. The problem is that Paratext searches each comment in a note and if any of the comments match, then it includes the note. So the only way it could work would be if a note only contained one comment (i.e. the initial creation of the note) and that one comment didn’t include the word.