Can you find and replace in word

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Find and Replace Text and Numbers in Word

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated March 7, 2022

Applies to: Microsoft^® Word^® 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 or 365 (Windows)

You can find and replace in Word using the Find and Replace dialog box as well as the Navigation Pane. If you use the dialog box, you can find and replace text and numbers and use wildcards for more advanced find and replace tasks. Wildcards are useful when you are not able to find an exact match. You can display the Find and Replace dialog box using a keyboard shortcut or the Home tab in the Ribbon.

Recommended article: How to Quickly Remove Hard Returns in Word Documents

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Note: Screenshots in this article are from Word 365 but are similar in previous versions of Word.

The Replace command appears on the Home tab in the Ribbon in the Editing group:

Using the Find and Replace dialog box to replace words or characters (and match case)

You can perform simple find and replace tasks using the Replace dialog box in its collapsed state. To access more advanced options, you will need to click More in the Replace dialog box to expand it.

To use the Find and Replace dialog box to find and replace text in Word (words or characters) and match case if needed:

1. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
2. In the Editing group, click Replace to display the Replace dialog box. Alternatively, press Ctrl + H if you prefer to use a keyboard shortcut to open the Replace dialog box.
3. Enter the text you want to find in the Find What box. You can specify whether Word should locate only matches with the exact capitalization by clicking More and then selecting or checking Match case.
4. Enter the text you want to replace in the Replace box.
5. Click Find Next and then click Replace for each occurrence or click Replace All.
6. Click Close.

In the following example, the Replace dialog box has been expanded to display other options including Match case:

Finding and replacing using wildcards

To use wildcards, you will need to use the Find and Replace dialog box and expand it to display more options. You can then select the option to Use wildcards. A wildcard can replace one or more characters in a string of text or numbers. The most common wildcard is the asterisk (*).

It’s important to note that wildcard searches are case sensitive. Also, Word uses «lazy» pattern matching so it will stop matching as soon as possible. This means that you could enter part of a word and find that part without using wildcards.

To find and replace text using wildcards in Word:

1. Position the cursor at the location in the document where you want to start finding and replacing. If you want to start at the beginning of the document, you can press Ctrl + Home.
2. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
3. In the Editing group, click Replace. Alternatively, press Ctrl + H. A dialog box appears.
4. Select More to expand the dialog box.
5. Click in the Find What box.
6. Select or check the Use wildcards checkbox.
7. Enter the text and wildcard(s) you want to use. For example, enter s*l to find any text starting with s and ending with l.
8. Click in the Replace with box.
9. Enter the text you want to use to replace the text in the Find what box.
10. Click Find Next to find the first instance of the characters you want to find.
11. Click Replace or Replace All. If you click Replace, Word will select the next matching characters in the Find what box. If you click Replace All, Word will display a dialog box with the number of replacements. In this case, click OK.
12. If necessary, click Replace again. Repeat for each instance.
13. Click Close to close the dialog box.

In the following example, b*s has been entered in the Find what box to find any word starting with starting with b and ending with s:

If you want to undo a Replace or Replace All action, close the dialog box and press Ctrl + Z.

Using common wildcards

The most common wildcards you can use in the Find and Replace dialog box are the asterisk (*) to find multiple characters and the question mark (?) to find a single character.

For example:

b*l will find ball and barrel (a character followed any characters and ending with a specific character)

h?ll will find hill and hall (a character followed by any single character and then followed by 2 characters)

Using wildcards to find one or more instances of the same character

You can also use @ as a wildcard to find one or more instances of the same character.

For example:

catchal@ will find catchal or catchall

Using wildcards for alternate characters and ranges

You can also use wildcards to find alternate characters or ranges of characters. These are entered in square brackets [ ] and may be combined with other wildcards.

[ ] can be used to find each of a set of characters

[ – ] can be used to find each of a set of characters in a range

You can use any character or series of characters in a range within the square brackets (including the space character). Characters are processed in alphanumeric order from lowest to highest.

For example:

[abc] will find any of the letters a, b, or c

[G] will find the upper case letter G

[A-Z] will find any upper case letter

[0-9] will find any single number

[13579] will find any odd number

[0-9A-z] will find any number or letter

f[ai]n will find each of the characters in square brackets such as fan or fin

[b-f]at will find each of a range of characters such as bat, cat, and fat

Using wildcards to omit characters

If you want to omit specific characters, you can use an exclamation mark (!) combined with square brackets.

For example:

[!f]ast will find last and past but not fast

Using wildcards to find the beginning or end of a word

You can use the less than symbol (<) to find the beginning of a word and the greater than symbol (>) to find the end of a word. These wildcards are combined with characters in round brackets or parentheses.

For example,

<(watch) will find watching or watchman

(all)> will find wall or stall

These wildcards can be problematic if you are using a wildcard and you want to find > or < as characters in the document. If this is the case, enter a backslash () in front of the character so that it is not treated as a wildcard.

For example,

<*> will find <h1> or <h2>

Using wildcards to find instances of a character

You can use curly brackets { } to specify the number of instances of a character. These brackets can be combined with a comma to specify the number of instances. Counting can be used with individual characters or with sets of characters.

{n} is used to find the number of instances of a character

{n,} is used to find at least n instances of a character

{n,m} is used to find between n and m instances of a character

For example:

^p{2} will find two consecutive paragraph marks or hard returns (^p is a special character for a paragraph mark in Word)

{3} will find three spaces (there is a space entered before the first curly bracket)

30{2,} will find at least 2 instances of the preceding character such as 3000 or 30000

30{3,4} will find between 3 and 4 instances of the preceding character such as 30000 or 300000 not 300

These last wildcards are particularly useful if you are finding and replacing numbers in Word.

The Find and Replace dialog box offers more functionality as well. For example, you can also Find and Replace Formatting in Word.

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Exchange one text string for another in any version of Word

Updated on October 29, 2021

What to Know

• Open the Find and Replace tool in Word with the keyboard shortcut CTRL+H.
• Find and Replace doesn’t take capitalization into account unless you specifically tell it to.
• To replace capitalization, select More in the Find and Replace box, then Match Case > Replace or Replace All > OK.

All editions of Microsoft Word offer a feature called Find and Replace. Use this tool to search for a specific word, number, or phrase in a document and replace it with something else. You can also make several replacements at once—like changing a name or fixing something you’ve consistently misspelled. Use it, also, to replace numbers or punctuation and cap or uncap words.

If you turn on Track Changes before you begin, you can reject the replacement or deletion of any unintended word. 

Find and Replace a Word

The Microsoft Word Find and Replace dialog box, in its simplest form, prompts you to type the word you’re looking for and the word you want to replace it with. Then, click Replace, and either allow Word to change every entry for you or, go through them one at a time.

To open the tool, press Ctrl+H (Cmd+H on Mac).

Change Capitalization in Microsoft Word

The Find and Replace feature doesn’t take into account anything about capitalization unless you specifically tell it to. To get to that option you’ll need to click the More option in the Find and Replace dialog box:

1. Open the Find and Replace dialog box using your favorite method. We prefer Ctrl+H.
2. Click More.
3. Type the appropriate entry in the Find What and Replace With lines.
4. Click Match Case.
5. Click Replace and Replace again, or, click Replace All.
6. Click OK.

Advanced Options

When you select the More expander in the Search and Replace dialog box, you’ll encounter several customizations. The list of items varies according to which version of Word you’re running.

Search Options

Select the check boxes to include or exclude things like punctuation, white-space characters, or substrings. Plus, apply tools like word-form matching (i.e., walked also matches walking) and Soundex matching (Karin matches Karen).

Replace Options

Word supports more advanced substitutions, too. Use special characters to substitute text markup with symbols. For example, replace a character code like &amp; with an ampersand. This approach is useful for de-cluttering pasted HTML text that uses HTML codes to render certain symbols.

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Save time and reduce the risk of errors when you need to update text in your document. You can use Find and Replace in Word.

If you need to replace text throughout your Microsoft Word document, you don’t have to do it by hand. Using the Find and Replace feature, you can locate and change the text you want without the manual work.

What’s nice about this feature is that you can make it as detailed as you need. For instance, you can have it match the exact letter case for your word or phrase and ignore punctuation like apostrophes or hyphens. You can also have the tool replace all instances of the matching text or only specific ones.

Here’s how to use Find and Replace in Word as a time-saving way to update text in your document.

With your document open in Word, go to the Home tab. On the right side of the ribbon, click Replace. You can also open the tool using Find > Advanced Find and selecting the Replace tab.

Using a Simple Find and Replace

If you want to quickly find and replace it, the window is ready to go. Enter what you want to find and then what you want to replace it with. Click Find Next to see each instance highlighted in your document, and then click Replace for only the results you want.

To replace every instance at one time, click Replace All. You won’t see each individual result, only a message when all have been replaced, letting you know the number of replacements.

Using an Advanced Find and Replace

When the word or phrase you want to find and replace requires a bit extra, you can use advanced options. In the Find and Replace window, click More on the bottom left.

You’ll then see many additional search options for finding your text. Here are just a few examples of how these options can be helpful.

Match case: This option finds the exact letter case for your word or phrase. Let’s say you only want to find and replace the word “Abbey” but not “abbey.” By checking this box, the tool will only locate those instances of your word with the capital “A.”

Find whole words only: This option finds matches that are whole words, not parts of words. Let’s say you want to find the word “bed” and replace it with “beds.” But you also have “bedtime” throughout your document. By checking this box, the tool will only highlight instances of “bed” where it exists alone. It would not highlight “bedtime.”

Sounds like (English): This option finds words that sound the same. So, if you check this box and search for “Sally,” the tool will also highlight instances of the word “Salli,” “Sallie,” and “Sallee.” This is helpful if you’ve misspelled names or misused words.

Ignore punctuation characters: This option will ignore punctuation in the word or phrase you’re looking for. Let’s say you want to replace “keyword” with “keywords” but also have instances of “key-word” in your document. By checking this box, it will highlight both of those because it’s ignoring the hyphen in “key-word.”

This is just a handful of examples of how the advanced Find and Replace options can be helpful in Word. You can use additional options like finding all word forms, ignoring white space, and using wildcards per your preference.

Once you find the text you want to replace, hit either the Replace or Replace All button, as described earlier.

Save Time and Reduce the Risk of Errors

The Find and Replace feature can be handy for any document, but especially for lengthy ones where you have a lot of text to review. So if you need to update words, phrases, or names, check out this convenient feature.

For more, see how to use Find and Replace to update the formatting in your Word or Excel document.