Find and replace text
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Go to Home > Replace.
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Enter the word or phrase you want to replace in Find what.
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Enter your new text in Replace with.
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Choose Replace All to change all occurrences of the word or phrase. Or, select Find Next until you find the one you want to update, and then choose Replace.
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To specify only upper or lowercase in your search, select More > Match case. There are several other ways to search in this menu.
For other options, see Find and replace text
Find and replace basic text
In the upper-right corner of the document, in the search box 
, type the word or phrase that you want to find, and Word will highlight all instances of the word or phrase throughout the document.
To replace found text:
-
Select the magnifying glass, and then select Replace.
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In the Replace With box, type the replacement text.
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Select Replace All or Replace.
Tips:
-
You can also open the basic Find and Replace pane with the keyboard shortcut CONTROL + H.
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When you replace text, it’s a good idea to select Replace instead of Replace All. That way you can review each item before replacing it.
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You can find text with special formatting, such as bold or highlight, by using the Format menu.
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Select View > Navigation Pane.
-
In the Navigation Pane, select the magnifying glass.
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Select Settings
, and then select Advanced Find & Replace.
Notes:
-
Select the arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box to show all options.
-
-
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On the Format menu, select the option that you want.
If a second dialog box opens, select the options that you want, and then select OK.
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In the Find and Replace dialog box, select Find Next or Find All.
, and then select Advanced Find & Replace.
You can find and replace text with special formatting, such as bold or highlight, by using the Format menu.
-
Select View > Navigation Pane.
-
In the Navigation Pane, select the magnifying glass.
-
Select Settings
, and then select Advanced Find & Replace.
-
At the top of the dialog box, select Replace.
Notes:
-
Select the arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box to show all options.
-
-
-
On the Find what box, type the text that you want to find.
-
On the Format menu, select the formatting that you want to find.
If a second dialog box opens, select the options that you want, and then select OK.
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Select in the box next to Replace with.
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On the Format menu, select the replacement formatting. If a second dialog box appears, select the formats that you want, and then select OK.
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Select Replace, Replace All, or Find Next.
-
Select View > Navigation Pane.
-
In the Navigation Pane, select the magnifying glass.
-
Select Settings
, and then select Advanced Find & Replace.
Notes:
-
Select the arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box to show all options.
-
-
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On the Special menu, select the special character that you want to find.
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Select Find Next.
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Select View > Navigation Pane.
-
In the Navigation Pane, select the magnifying glass.
-
Select Settings
, and then select Advanced Find & Replace.
Notes:
-
Select the arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box to show all options.
-
-
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At the top of the Find and Replace dialog box, select Replace and then select in the Find What box, but don’t type anything there. Later, when you select a special character, Word will automatically put the character code in the box for you.
Note: Select the arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box to show all options.
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On the Special menu, select the special character that you want to find.
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Select in the Replace with box.
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On the Special menu, select the special character that you want to use as a replacement.
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Select Replace or Find Next.
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Select View > Navigation Pane.
-
In the Navigation Pane, select the magnifying glass.
-
Select Settings
, and then select Advanced Find & Replace.
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Select the Use wildcards check box.
If you don’t see the Use wildcards check box, select
. -
Select the Special menu, select a wildcard character, and then type any additional text in the Find what box.
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Select Find Next.
Tips:
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To cancel a search in progress, press
+ PERIOD. -
You can also enter a wildcard character directly in the Find what box instead of selecting an item from the Special pop-up menu.
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To search for a character that’s defined as a wildcard character, type a backslash () before the character. For example, type ? to find a question mark.
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You can use parentheses to group the wildcard characters and text and to indicate the order of evaluation. For example, search for <(pre)*(ed)> to find «presorted» and «prevented.»
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You can search for an expression and use the n wildcard character to replace the search string with the rearranged expression. For example, type (Newman) (Belinda) in the Find what box and 2 1 in the Replace with box. Word will find «Newman Belinda» and replace it with «Belinda Newman.»
-
-
To replace found text:
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Select the Replace tab, and then select the Replace with box.
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Select Special, select a wildcard character, and then type any additional text in the Replace with box.
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Select Replace All, Replace, or Find Next.
Tip: When you replace text, it’s a good idea to select Replace instead of Replace All. That way you can confirm each replacement to make sure that it’s correct.
-
.
+ PERIOD.You can refine a search by using any of the following wildcard characters.
|
To find |
Use this |
For example |
|---|---|---|
|
Any single character |
? |
s?t finds «sat» and «set.» |
|
Any string of characters |
* |
s*d finds «sad» and «started.» |
|
One of the specified characters |
[ ] |
w[io]n finds «win» and «won.» |
|
Any single character in this range |
[-] |
[r-t]ight finds «right» and «sight» and «tight.» Ranges must be in ascending order. |
|
Any single character except the characters inside the brackets |
[!] |
m[!a]st finds «mist» and «most» but not «mast.» |
|
Any single character except characters in the range inside the brackets |
[!x-z] |
t[!a-m]ck finds «tock» and «tuck» but not «tack» or «tick.» Ranges must be in ascending order. |
|
Exactly n occurrences of a character or expression |
{ n} |
fe{2}d finds «feed» but not «fed.» |
|
At least n occurrences of a character or expression |
{ n,} |
fe{1,}d finds «fed» and «feed.» |
|
A range of occurrences of a character or expression |
{ n, n} |
10{1,3} finds «10,» «100,» and «1000.» |
|
One or more occurrences of a character or expression |
@ |
lo@t finds «lot» and «loot.» |
|
The beginning of a word |
< |
<(inter) finds «interesting» and «intercept» but not «splintered.» |
|
The end of a word |
> |
(in)> finds «in» and «within,» but not «interesting.» |
Word for the web lets you find and replace basic text. You can match case or fine whole words only. For more varied options, open your document in Word for the desktop.
Need more help?
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:
- Open the Find and Replace dialog box using your favorite method. We prefer Ctrl+H.
- Click More.
- Type the appropriate entry in the Find What and Replace With lines.
- Click Match Case.
- Click Replace and Replace again, or, click Replace All.
- 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 & 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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Have you ever finishing typing a letter, report or presentation only to discover that you misspelled a person’s name or had the wrong company listed multiple times throughout your document? No worries—it’s an easy fix. Using Word’s Find and Replace feature, you can quickly locate and replace text. Let’s see how it works.
Switch over to the “Home” tab on Word’s Ribbon and then click the “Replace” button.
This opens Word’s Find and Replace window. In the “Find What” box, type the word or phrase you want to locate. If you only want to find text in your document, you can go ahead and click the “Find Next” button to have Word jump to the next occurrence of that word. Keep clicking it to browse through all the results.
If you want to replace the text you find with something else, type the replacement text into the “Replace With” box. You can enter up to 255 characters in the both the “Find What” and “Replace With” boxes, by the way.
In this example, let’s say we want to replace the name “Williams” with the name “Billingsly”, so we’ve typed that text into the respective boxes. Next, we’d click the “Find Next” button to have Word locate the first instance of the text in the “Find What” box.
Word jumps the document to that point and highlights the result in gray, still keeping the Find and Replace window on top for you. Click the “Replace” button to replace the currently selected result with whatever text is in the “Replace With” box.
To replace all instances at once without stopping and reviewing each one, you can click the “Replace All” button.
Be careful when using “Replace All” because it will automatically replace all instances, including those you might not want to replace. In the example below, there are three more instances of “Williams,” but we only want to replace the next two. In this case, we would only click “Replace” for the second and third instance.
If there is a particular instance where you don’t want to replace the text, click “Find Next” as many times as needed until you come to an example where you need to replace text.
To exit from Find and Replace, click the “Cancel” button.
Of course, since it is Word we’re talking about here, there are also lots of other things you can do to make your searches more sophisticated:
- Use wildcards in your searches to narrow them down to more specific results.
- Search directly within Word’s Navigation pane to have Word show you which headings have your search terms included under them.
- Replace double spaces between sentences with single spaces.
- Search for specific formatting or special characters.
The basic of searching and replacing text in Word are pretty straightforward, but there’s a lot you can do with it once you start digging.
READ NEXT
- › What Your Function Keys Do in Microsoft Word
- › How to Find and Replace Formatting in Microsoft Word
- › How to Delete a Page in Microsoft Word
- › How to Use Find and Replace in Google Docs
- › How to Replace Any Character with Newlines in Notepad++
- › How to Search in Google Docs
- › How to Search for Text in Word
- › Expand Your Tech Career Skills With Courses From Udemy
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Often when working in Microsoft Word we only need to change one or two words in the file to make it relevant to another client or project. For Example, updating a client’s name in a 30-page contract or updating the address of a company or speakers name in a briefing document.
Because scrolling through your document changing each word individually would be a tedious and time-consuming task Microsoft has built-in a hand tool called ‘Find and Replace’.
Find and Replace allows you to replace one word with another, across the entirety of your Microsoft Word Document at the click of a button.
There is no limit to how many times you can use this tool, but it does need to be done word by word, we can’t yet find and replace multiple words at once. But still, it’s a huge time saver and will guarantee you don’t miss a word that needs replacing.
In this post we will show you how to use the Find and Replace tool in Microsoft Word and leave you updating your document in seconds.
Using Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace
- Open Word
- Find and click Edit in the Home bar
- Under Edit click Find
- In the Find tab press Replace….
- This will open a navigation box on the left-hand side of your Word Document
- Type the word you wish to replace in the Find box
- Type the word you wish to replace this word with, in the second text box
- Choose Replace. To replace all instances at the same time, select Replace All.
- Press OK.
You have no successfully used Words Find and Replace feature to update your Microsoft Word Document.
Advanced Word Replacement
If your word search shows multiple options, as shown below.
You can scroll through the highlighted words until you find the word you would like to replace. This will narrow down the word search and ensure you only replace the exact word you are looking for.
Looking for an easier solution to your collaboration frustrations?
When collaborating in Microsoft Word, your email inbox can quickly become filled with updated versions of a document being sent back and forward between colleagues.
John made an edit, sent an email ‘see updated attached’.
Then Lucy made an edit, sent an email 30minutes later ‘updated version attached’, and it goes on for days.
Sending updated versions via email is one way to know a new version is available and required your attention. But it can also clutter your inbox with internal emails, with a single line or sometimes nobody of text in the email.
The alternative is to send them via a group chat channel such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, but you should make a new channel for the document updates so that you don’t miss one, or lose it in an open channel as other conversations start happening around the document being sent.
With overflowing inboxes and your slack channel constantly telling you there are un-read messages there needs to be a solution for collaborating alone. Somewhere your updated versions can live in peace, with no other noise around them to allow you to easily review and check them at any time.
The solution is here and it comes in the form of a great new purpose-built tool called Simul Docs.
Simul was built just for Microsoft Word and for you, to help you collaborate with ease.
First and foremost, Simul will store and manage every version of your document in an easy to navigate toolbar that you can access from anywhere you have an internet connection (or offline if you do a quick download before losing your connection).
As a new version of your document is created, Simul will automatically save the file under a numerical version number that makes sense. The first version is named 0.0.1, the second 0.0.2, the third 0.0.3 and so on. Making it easy for you to keep track of how many versions have been made and which one is the most recent.
But what about any extra notes or comments the author wanted to make, ones they would usually put in the email such as ‘Tim, this is my final round of edits before we send onto client’? No worries, Simul allows you to add comments and notes to any version as well, so your team can see what is going on at all times.
Speaking of comments and notes, Simul will also track every comment, change or edit made to a version for you, without you having to remember to turn tracked changes on. That’s pretty cool, right?
So a tool that manages your version control, saves your files and stores them and tracks all of your edits and changes without you thinking about any of it, it sounds too good to be true or as though it would be difficult to use or implement. Well, don’t worry it’s not, it’s here and it is called Simul Docs and it’s so easy to use, after walking through the in-app tutorial we had it down within 3 minutes.
It’s a bit like an apple product, it just makes sense. It’s clean and simple, nothing too complicated, but with everything you need all in the one spot.
If you’re not convinced already, head over to Simul now and give their free trial a go.
Collaboration just got a whole lot easier with Simul Docs.
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- Find and Replace in Word is a tool that searches a document for a specific word or phrase.
- You can use the tool to replace a word or phrase with another.
- You can review each instance of a word before replacing it, or replace all instances at once.
Find and Replace is a helpful tool in Microsoft Word that searches your document for a specific word or phrase.
You can use the tool to replace one word with another, which can be helpful in situations where you need to go back to change the spelling of a word or check a document for instances of a repeated word to avoid redundancy. For example, if you’re deep into writing a paper and realize you’ve been misspelling someone’s name (let’s say Mark when it should have been Marc), you can use Find and Replace to easily find all instances of Mark and replace it with Marc with a few clicks.
Below, we’ve outlined how to use Find and Replace in Word on macOS and Windows.
Marissa Perino is a former editorial intern covering executive lifestyle. She previously worked at Cold Lips in London and Creative Nonfiction in Pittsburgh. She studied journalism and communications at the University of Pittsburgh, along with creative writing. Find her on Twitter: @mlperino.
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Abigail Abesamis Demarest is a contributing writer for Insider based in New York. She loves a good glazed donut and nerdy deep dives into the science of food and how it’s made.
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