I’m not the best GREPper out there, but I do know how to create a few simple styles. One of the things I like to do is see the results of turning a GREP style on and off for several types of paragraphs. But I don’t want to delete my precious, laboriously-made GREP formulas. This morning I had an epiphany.
To temporarily turn off the GREP style, select the character style and change it to None. It’s that simple! You don’t delete the GREP style, you just make it do nothing.
A GREP style set to apply the No Break character style.
A GREP style turned off by setting it to None.
But then I found Anne-Marie’s comment to Mike Rankin’s post Adventures in GREPland where she reminds him that an asterisk (*) in front of a GREP expression will turn off the expression.
Placing an asterisk in front of a GREP express also turns it off.
The benefit to using the asterisk trick is that you don’t have to remember which character style was associated with that expression. You just have to remember to use an asterisk.
This article was last modified on July 25, 2019
This article was first published on December 18, 2014
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Does anyone know where I can find Marijan Tompa’s GREP Toggler? the links above are no longer good and I can’t find mention of it anywhere.
A talent is rare and valuable! Some have it, some don’t. Some detect it at first glance, some don’t. Some are looking for it, some don’t …
Marijan Tompa is an awesome scripter, rare and precious.
Among other things, he has published tomaxxiGREP in the summer of 2011! … There are three years! Pure genius! Without further comment.
I’m not sure if it’s an actual switch for disabling GREPs or not – but the asterisks is a valid GREP code – match zero or more of the preceding character or expression.
As there are no preceding characters it doesn’t find anything – therefore the rest of the code is inert.
Sandee, if you turn off the grep style by using an invalid regular expression (which is how an initial * probably works), think of the pain you’re causing the grep styles machinery. At every move, it’s hit with a lurching error internally…
I too would also recommend Marijan Tompa’s GREP Toggler and tomaxxiGrep.
Sometimes I GREP just because I can.
Don’t forget Grep Toggler and tomaxxiGrep… https://tomaxxi.com/downloads/