Last Updated on April 3, 2021 by Dave Farquhar
Sometimes you need a way to find capitalized words in Libreoffice or Openoffice. This can make it easier to figure out if the word needed to be capitalized, in the case of a poorly written or edited document. Then you can make a decision whether the capitalization was appropriate.
Another time you would need to find capitalized words in Openoffice or Libreoffice would be when you’re creating an index. I’m sure there are others.
It’s easier than it sounds.
In Libreoffice or Openoffice Writer, navigate to Edit -> Find and Replace or just hit CTRL-H. Select Match Case. Click More Options, then select Regular Expressions.
The enter the expression [:upper:][:lower:]{1,} and click Find All.
You don’t have to understand the expression in order to use it. It searches for any capital letter followed by two or more lowercase letters. Then cycle through one at a time by clicking Find Next (you can hit ALT-F as a shortcut).
This saves me a lot of time. It’s helpful to zero in on one problem at a time and fix it. Otherwise the sheer number of problems and pages gets to be too much.
So the next time you need to find capitalized words in Libreoffice or Openoffice, this trick will help you. Computers are ideal for repetitive tasks, so this is an example of letting the computer do something it’s good at, so you can do work the computer can’t do. Humans are still better at deciding whether a word is justifiably capitalized. And humans are much better at deciding if a word is important enough to include in an index.
Why does the same trick work in both? They’re derived from each other.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.