(LibreOffice) Replace every character in a selection with *

Question

I want to shadow portions of a .odt document with stars for every character in the selection area. I guess it should be possible using the find and replace tool in LibreOffice. Just need to know how to tell it to find every character, some thing like a wildcard star character.

Answer 1

You can use regular expressions:

In Edit → Find and Replace dialog box,

• enter a single dot (.) into the Find: input box,
• enter a star (*) into the Replace: input box,
• select Current selection only,
• select Regular expressions, and
• click Replace All.

Additionally: If you want to replace with stars only the non-blank characters, you may use [^ ] in the Find: input box.