The wildcard ^9 only matches one digit. So for numbers composed of more than one digit, you'll have to use the wildcard more than once.

In your example, you'll have to do two Find/Change operations; one with the pattern you've used, and another with this pattern: ^9^9.(space)

For more tips and tricks, listen to InDesignSecrets Episode 30: Find…Change…Format!

Thank you so much Mr. Sousa. Have a safe and merry Christmas.

I've become addicted to formatting text with Find/Change, and always try to find new ways to have my computer do the tedious work for me. This InDesignSecrets website looks interesting, gonna check it in depth.

I signed up for InDesign Magazine's free Tip-of-the-Week, and with it I learned some things I didn't know about. Here are two:

Delete Preference Files
You can delete InDesign's preference files when launching InDesign. To display this option dialog, launch InDesign, then immediately select Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) or Ctrl+Option+Command+Shift (Mac OS).
Eliot Harper, from InDesign Magazine Issue #7

Zoom-sensitive Ruler Guides
Hold down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) while dragging out a ruler guide to make it visible only at the current zoom level and larger. If you zoom out, the guide will disappear. When you zoom back to the previous magnification or above, the ruler guide will reappear.
Keith Gilbert, from InDesign Magazine #7

I'm also a subscriber of the ID Mag itself. It is quite good, for both beginner and advanced users. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time available to read it all (60+ pages!!), so I end up not taking full advantage of it :^(

take a look around the InD Scripting forum at Adobe. F/C routines are a simple thing to script, and there's really no reason not to if you'll be doing this often. if you have trouble finding a sample that works, contact me and I'll dig up a sample to send you (assuming you're working on Mac).

thanks plainclothes,

I'll check that out. But, this actually hapened on the project above as well. Why?

You prob only want to change the style, right?
In the F/C palette there's More Options, where you define a new style for the selected elements.

No, I want to ad a tab. It's replacing the numbers in my list WITH the wildcard, which is supposed to just be a numeral placeholder. ^9 is the wildcard for 'any number' It 'should' find a single number and add a tab.

please help me!

Did you assign the Section Numbers with a character style? If you do that then you can easily do a find/change to replace them.

I'll try that. So, if I'm using wild card characters, it needs to have a style?

Thanks

Ok, so it turns out, exactly what I want to do indesign can't do, even though it is alluded to.

Pattern search (GREP) via BBEdit. Already figured it out, reimporting the xml is not working for me tho.