The Sorcerer's Workshop

Recently I had the 'fun' assignment of cleaning up a number of 'Word HTML' documents for use on a web site. Thankfully, Dreamweaver's 'Clean Up Word HTML' command completed about 80 percent of the task. But that still left a sticky 20 percent to be edited. To repair the remaining offending code I decided to use the 'Find' and 'Replace' commands. I'm sure most Dreamweaver users out there have used the 'Replace' tool to remove problem tags or text. Unfortunately, the usual 'Replace' command was not refined enough for my needs. I was going to have to explore the power of editing individual tags within the 'Replace' tool.

The document in question had a number of and tags I wanted to replace with a simple tag. To accomplish this with minimal labor, I followed these steps: I selected Edit > Replace. Under 'Find What' I chose 'Tag.'

Select 'Tag' Then I selected the specific tag I wanted to affect. I chose 'p' for paragraph.

Select the HTML 'Tag' to be edited After that, I had to set the parameters for the tag. These parameters available include with attribute, without attribute, containing, not containing, inside tag, and not inside tag. I chose 'With Attribute' and 'class.'

Select 'class' attribute. Then I selected 'any value' so all 'class' tags would be affected by my 'Replace' edit.

Select '[any value]' Finally I selected the 'Action' to be performed on the chosen tag. I selected 'Replace Tag & Contents' with new tag '.'

Select 'Replace Tag & Contents' Important - Remember to save your 'Replace Queries.' The page I was editing was just one of a dozen I needed to convert. Later I could bring up my saved queries and apply it to the other eleven pages. This is a great time saver.

Remember - Save those queries The real power of this tool is the ability to expand the replace parameters by adding more search layers with different settings, allowing you to include or exclude other attributes within a tag. For example I could edit the 'p class=[any tag]' but preserve any tags with the 'align' attribute by clicking the '+ button' and choosing 'Without Attribute' & 'align.'

Adding to a 'replace query' This is what my 'Replace' query looked like. Then I selected 'Replace All' and let Dreamweaver do the heavy lifting.

Screenshot of my 'Replace' edit Unfortunately you won't find much help in the manual that ships with Dreamweaver. There is some information if you go Help > Using Dreamweaver. But ultimately you are going to have to take the plunge and learn the power of this tool on your own. Believe me, it will be time well spent.