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I use Ulysses 15 for my writing. The tool has a robust global search but, to my knowledge, it does not provide a replace function (only the sheet search has a "find and replace" function).

Does anyone know how to use the global search, with all of its powers, to also replace content?

Note: I'm aware of the local, in-sheet search. What I'm looking for is global, library-wide search and replace.

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  • Is this on a Windows platform? If so, doesn't <Ctrl>+<h> give you that functionality? Commented Mar 13, 2019 at 18:29
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    Ulysses only works on MacOS or iOS, not Windows.
    – iamtowrite
    Commented Mar 13, 2019 at 18:37
  • Shift-Command-H works in Word on a Mac. Does that do anything?
    – Cyn
    Commented Mar 13, 2019 at 19:39
  • Well, in Ulysses, ⌥⌘F opens the in-sheet in search and replace, but not a global search and replace.
    – iamtowrite
    Commented Mar 13, 2019 at 21:05

2 Answers 2

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You can't use the global search for a global "search and replace"

As this deleted answer states you can find the official documentation here. It doesn't mention this function, only the "Search for Menu Actions" under the point "One Shortcut to Find Them All". The way this is phrased already suggests that this is a special case because it's not grouped under something like "one shortcut for all sheets" like the other groups that are for example "Editor" and "View" and encompass lots of shortcuts.

I also checked more sources to find something about this and I couldn't find anything. I checked the Ulysses Blog, especially the category tips and tricks but nothing mentions a global replace. I looked at articles like Seven Ulysses Superpowers, which mentions the global search at number 3, but doesn't mention something like a replace function. I also looked at the official Ulysses Twitter account, but nothing useful came up.

Apparently some other people have the same problem that you have. The people that use the tool Editorial wrote some Workflows to make their lifes easier and one of them seems to be a global search and replace from Ulyssess under the name of Ulysses RegEx & CleanSheets :

1) Regex Find Replace on all sheets. Only replaces text, and leaves all tags and objects alone.

This seems to be quite complicated and it basically automatically exports your Ulysses files to your Editorial app, does a global search and replace for normal text and then sends it back to Ulysses. I don't know how well this works because I haven't tested it. It simply suggests to me that what you are trying to do is not possible in the normal Ulysses app, so the answer is: you can't use the global search for a global "search and replace".

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  • This is such a drawback for such a strong tool. I've only been using for a couple of weeks and I already was in need of a global search and replace several times (at least search and replace in sheets under the same group.
    – iamtowrite
    Commented Mar 17, 2019 at 13:34
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The answer turns out to be pretty simple and very much in line with the way that Ulysses works:

It is true that there's no global search and replace, but that's misleading. Simply select the root folder of your manuscript (or whatever) in the first pane, select all of the sheets that appear in the second pane (CMD-A), and then do the Edit -> Find -> Find and Replace action.

Considering that Ulysses is designed to hold all of your writing for all time, a true global F&R would almost always be the wrong solution.

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