So sorry for the delay, but good news follows! ...

I'm so sorry for the delay. I got sidetracked with life/work interruptions. But my ADD brain never left the IT arena! I originally had created a multistep process for you to walk through the entries and change them one-by-one. It was still super fast because of the way it was set up, but in the bazillion "change a bunch of stuff in the glossary" scenarios I've encountered over the years, I've almost always been able to set it up where it was a one-and-done process that didn't require multiple steps. I guess I've been lucky that there has always been a predictable pattern to the data. And I was just baffled that in your shortish (compared to the megawatt size that IT glossaries can grow to) glossary, there wasn't some pattern.

And then, just as I was creating a little tutorial video for you to use the multistep process, I had a brick-in-the-head moment that, OMG, there IS a pattern! I just wasn't seeing it because I was stuck in the tunnel looking ONLY for hyphens and being sidetracked by the numerous entries that had hyphens that shouldn't get the en dash.

Thinking about your glossary entries, am I correct in assuming that the ONLY entries that you will want to switch to an en dash go something like this ...

some number(s) hyphen some number(s)?

... each and every one? I'm almost willing to bet the family jewels I'm correct because (1) your glossary is limited to time-centric entries, and because of this, (2) there is unlikely to be any other scenario where you would want to add an en dash, and (3) every. single. one. of the number-hyphen-number entries WILL qualify as eligible for an en dash switch. It doesn't matter how many numbers are on either side of the hyphen, just that it follows that string pattern.

So with that in mind, I made a new macro. I didn't have to start from scratch for either macro because I have so many in my repository already from past find/replace events, plus some I've made for colleagues. So I modified an old one to align with your scenario.

I got stuck in one part because my old macro didn't include a safety checkpoint I wanted to add, since I'll be sharing this in a way that anyone can use it (and is welcome to). I always, always, always ONLY grab the text between the entries tags to dump into Word, to ensure no unintended changes are made to text outside of that area. But who knows what other users will do. So I wanted to limit the changes, but the macro would hang after I modified it to do that. So I consulted with my ChatGPT buddy and was able to fix it lickety-split. Yay to that! I also set it up to account for the possibility that you may have already made some changes to a few entries manually (perhaps inside of active IT). And I didn't want it to add display text if it already existed. So here's what the macro does:

Searches only in "entry text" for any number(s)-hyphen-number(s) string. If found, it changes the hyphen to a {Ctrl -}. It then checks the display text and if there's already something there, it makes no change; otherwise, it adds applicable display text. I have it using only a hyphen in the display text (not an actual en dash) just to ensure it doesn't encounter display issues, since that's only for the advisory. It only changes entries that qualify. Then it highlights the changed entry. It runs in a split second. After it runs, you can visually see what was changed and scan it for any issues, which, hopefully, there shouldn't be any. When you copy-and-paste it back into the Notepad file, the highlights will disappear, of course. Bam, and you're done!

I added the macro and instructions to a Google folder, to make it easy to download. I also added my IT template that I use for these purposes, which you're welcome to use if you haven't already made one.

I don't know where you fall on the tech-savvy or Word know-how spectrum, so I made the instructions on the assumption that you need detailed instructions, just in case. Of course, you may not need any instructions, in which case, you won't even need the instruction page. Please forgive the redundancy if that's the case!

This is the first time I've ever shared a link in this forum, so I'm crossing my fingers it will work. I'll check the post after it posts to the forum, and if it doesn't come through, I'll go with Plan B.

Since I'm sharing the link publicly rather than via a private invite, the drive is restricted to view-only access, so there's no risk of anyone modifying the macro and inserting any malicious code into it. But, of course, anyone else is welcome to check it out and use the files if they want. :)

Let me know if this works for you! If I've missed something about the entries and you want/need the manual version that allows you to change one line at a time, I'm happy to share that too. But I wanted to avoid unnecessary information overload if you didn't need that.

It's a happy accident that I had that life/work interrupt, which gave me more time to think about it, because otherwise, you might have made the manual changes when you didn't have to. I'm crossing my fingers that is the case!

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In other news, I have an unrelated question: Do you have occasion to use the backtick/tilde character in your work? If so, how often does that happen (e.g., very rare, sometimes, frequently)? I was prompted to ask this based on another post I saw from you. Depending on what your answer is, I MIGHT have a solution for you that you'll like for another issue.

-Karen :)

P.S. I did not see the Google Drive link come through in my post, so I'm editing the post to add it manually here, which you can paste into you URL window.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HvnI2gYQLlRckKqGhivS8YXEdtd55Dg-?usp=sharing