Multiline Find & Replace in Visual Studio

Question

Can it be done? We're using VS2005 and VS2008 and VS2010.

I don't mean regular expressions - which have their place - but plain old text find & replace. I know we can do it (at a pinch) with regular expressions using the \n tag but prefer not to get tangled up in regex escape characters, plus there's a readability issue.

If it can't be done what plain and simple (free) alternative are people using? That doesn't involve knocking up our own macro.

Answer 1

I finally found it..

No need to download and load any external macro.

Its working in Visual Studio 2008 with in-built macro at least. :)

Steps :
1) Select text you want to find.
2) Press "Alt+F8" or open "Tools -> Macros -> Macro Explorer"
3) Double click "Sample -> Utilities -> FindLine". (It will open Find box with your selection loaded in "Find" field. Don't worry about truncated text shown in "Find" field. Trust me, field has it all..MS way of showing it may be... :) )
4) Click on "Quick Replace" button on "Find And Replace" dialog box. Enter your replace with text.
5) And Click any of 3 buttons as per your requirement...and its done. :)

Hurray.. its working.. May not be a straight forward way to do it but you know with MS.. nothing is straightforward and easy.. :)