Finding and Replacing Text Across Your Whole Manuscript

Renaming a character partway through a draft, or catching a term you've spelled two different ways, means touching every chapter it appears in. Deckle's search does that in one pass instead of document by document.

What You'll Need

• The exact text you're searching for (or close to it: case and whole-word matching can be toggled on separately).

Step-by-Step

1. Open Search. Click the search icon in the left rail, or press Ctrl+F / Cmd+F.
2. Type the term and check the result groups. Each document with a match is listed separately, so you can see the scope before changing anything.
3. Narrow the match if needed. Turn on whole-word matching if your term is also a substring of unrelated words (searching "Ann" would otherwise also match inside "Anna" or "announce"). Turn on match case if you need to distinguish, say, a proper noun from the same word used generically.
4. Decide your replace scope:
   • Use the per-document replace button on a result group if you only want to fix that one chapter.
   • Use the "1" (replace one) button if you want to eyeball each occurrence individually, useful when the same word is used in more than one sense and a blanket replace would be wrong in some spots.
   • Use "All" only once you've confirmed every listed match should actually change.
5. Handle Codex and titles separately. Search doesn't touch document titles or Codex entries, so after a character rename, open their Codex entry and update it there too, and rename any document whose title uses the old name.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming "Replace All" is safe for a short, common word. A name like "Will" collides with the modal verb. Turn on whole-word and match-case matching first, or step through matches individually with the "1" button instead.
• Forgetting Codex isn't searched. A full rename means checking Codex and any document titles by hand. Search covers manuscript text, synopses, and notes, not those.
• Expecting a synopsis or notes match to scroll to the exact spot. It only switches the Inspector to the right tab; the field itself is usually short enough to scan by eye once you're there.
• Typing special characters expecting pattern matching. Deckle's search always treats your input as literal text. There's no regex or wildcard support to lean on for more complex patterns.