Anders J (Customer) asked a question.

July 4, 2026 at 4:15 PM
Why is find and replace not working well anymore in Productivity Suite?

Productivity 4.7.0.47. I try to use find and replace, and now I search for a tag which I have used many times, in my program, but find and replace can not find it. I use the tag clean, and I use individual bits in that tag. I am appreciative for the structured text option now so I can use an external editor, but I need the find and replace because I have to change a bunch of tags names, where I use the dash in the name, and so far I have not found a way for productivity structured text to handle a dash in tag names.

 

Take a look:

image 

Anyone have a workaround?

  • 3 answers
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rjjong1 likes this.

  • ADC_TechnologyGroup_06 (AutomationDirect)

    Good afternoon,

     

    There's a note in Help Topic P346 on Structured Text programming under Syntax which states, "In order to use tags that contain disallowed characters (such as system tags), the tag must be enclosed in curly braces and prefixed with a “$” – for example, to use the “2 Second Bit” tag in ST code, it must be coded as follows, “${2 Second Bit}”. See the Tag Requirements section of this topic for a list of characters that are not allowed in tags used in ST code."

     

    So, using tags with disallowed ST characters need to be enclosed with dollar sign and curly braces like this ${tag name}.

     

    Further on in the help topic there's a section under Tag Requirements in this topic which states:

    The following list contains characters that are not allowed in tag names that are used in ST code.

    • Cannot contain operator symbols (e.g. +, -, =, *, /, \, #, @, ^, %, <, >,).

    • Cannot contain spaces.

    • Cannot contain brackets [ ] or braces { }.

    • Cannot contain semicolons.

    • Cannot use reserved keywords (IF, THEN, PI, TRUE, etc.).

     

    So your original tag names could be used in ST and would need to be entered like this ${ER R 1-16} for the whole tag or even ${ER R 1-16}:1 for a specific bit in order to be interpreted correctly and handle the spaces, dash, and colon.

     

    Glad to hear that external editor is working well with our new ST feature and hoping this will get you moving forward. I'll report the Find/Replace behavior to the appropriate team. If you have any more details or could send a simple project which duplicates the problem then that would be appreciated.

     

    Thanks for posting and letting us know!

     

    Edit: corrected bit of word notation from ${ER R 1-16:1} to ${ER R 1-16}:1 which is the proper way to use that notation in our ST Editor.

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    Selected as Best

  • ADC_TechnologyGroup_06 (AutomationDirect)

    Good afternoon,

     

    There's a note in Help Topic P346 on Structured Text programming under Syntax which states, "In order to use tags that contain disallowed characters (such as system tags), the tag must be enclosed in curly braces and prefixed with a “$” – for example, to use the “2 Second Bit” tag in ST code, it must be coded as follows, “${2 Second Bit}”. See the Tag Requirements section of this topic for a list of characters that are not allowed in tags used in ST code."

     

    So, using tags with disallowed ST characters need to be enclosed with dollar sign and curly braces like this ${tag name}.

     

    Further on in the help topic there's a section under Tag Requirements in this topic which states:

    The following list contains characters that are not allowed in tag names that are used in ST code.

    • Cannot contain operator symbols (e.g. +, -, =, *, /, \, #, @, ^, %, <, >,).

    • Cannot contain spaces.

    • Cannot contain brackets [ ] or braces { }.

    • Cannot contain semicolons.

    • Cannot use reserved keywords (IF, THEN, PI, TRUE, etc.).

     

    So your original tag names could be used in ST and would need to be entered like this ${ER R 1-16} for the whole tag or even ${ER R 1-16}:1 for a specific bit in order to be interpreted correctly and handle the spaces, dash, and colon.

     

    Glad to hear that external editor is working well with our new ST feature and hoping this will get you moving forward. I'll report the Find/Replace behavior to the appropriate team. If you have any more details or could send a simple project which duplicates the problem then that would be appreciated.

     

    Thanks for posting and letting us know!

     

    Edit: corrected bit of word notation from ${ER R 1-16:1} to ${ER R 1-16}:1 which is the proper way to use that notation in our ST Editor.

    Expand Post
    Selected as Best

  • Anders J (Customer)

    Thank you for your reply on Independence day. That's impressive. I'ii move forward. Onwards and upwards.

    • ADC_TechnologyGroup_06 (AutomationDirect)

      I'm happy to help, it's not the norm to work on holidays but I knew this answer off the top of my head and wanted to help a fellow controls engineer stuck working on the weekend.

       

      Edited the answer above for bit of word syntax requirements.

       

      Edit: corrected bit of word notation from ${ER R 1-16:1} to ${ER R 1-16}:1 which is the proper way to use that notation in our ST Editor.

      Expand Post

 

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