Reply To: Using Find/Change to put brackets around formatted text

If you want to do this for all italic text:
* choose the GREP tab at the top of the find/change dialog box
* type (.+) into the Find What field
* use the Find Formatting area at the bottom of the dialog box to find italic text (or the italic character style you’re using, or whatever)
* in the Change to field, type [$1]

Hit change all.

it didn’t work before because you didn’t have anything to find before. You need something in parenthesis in find what.