Finding text strings including spaces (FM 553 & 556, Win95)

[Jay Smith <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings,

I thought that maybe 556 would solve a problem, but no luck.  Maybe I
am not looking in the correct direction anyway?!

I am trying to find an inclusive "text string" that includes spaces
and punctuation, where I know the start and finish, but not the
middle.

What I want to find is...

  XXXtext string, with spaces & punct.ZZZ

     (that starts with XXX and ends with ZZZ)

I can't figure out how!

Searching (with Wild Cards = On) will work for...
  (the vertical bar is the "pipe" character.)

   Pattern   XXX*ZZZ
   Finds     XXXtextZZZ

   Pattern   XXX*|ZZZ
   Finds     XXXtext.ZZZ
   
   Pattern   XXX*|*ZZZ
   Finds     XXXtext.textZZZ

And so forth.

However, I can't seem to come up with something that will find:

   XXXtext, and more text, until it ends, period.ZZZ

OR

   XXXtext, and more text, with no periodZZZ

Unless it is specifically built to exactly match ... and that is
pointless.

Help!  What am I missing?  

Is there a wild card character that will find any numbering of
characters, INCLUDING spaces and punctuation????

(My purpose is to use the macro facility of WP8 to place begin format
and end format text markers into text to replace italic, bold,
superscript, etc. codes.  I then want to import into FM, and use
Find/Replace (eventually in a macro facility, hope, hope) to automate
the Replace By Pasting of the delineated text (and then the removal of
the markers).  Sounds like a pain, I know, but my authors can use WP8
and Word, but either can't use FM, won't afford FM, etc.)

Thank you.

-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: jay@jaysmith.com

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