How to find same words in word

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

1. Open Word
2. Find and click Edit in the Home bar

1. Under Edit click Find

1. In the Find tab press Replace….

1. This will open a navigation box on the left-hand side of your Word Document
2. Type the word you wish to replace in the Find box

1. Type the word you wish to replace this word with, in the second text box

1. Choose Replace. To replace all instances at the same time, select Replace All.

1. 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.

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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.

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When writing, even the most expert makes mistakes. Both in writing and in style. On many occasions the same program corrects them, but sometimes you have to help it, as is the case of finding all the repeated words in a Word document .

When you review your document, no matter how many times you read it, you may not notice all the errors that are in it. Similarly, the automatic corrector is not always as effective as it is thought. Don’t worry, Word has the necessary tools to correct your text and leave it without a single error. You just have to learn how to use it to get the most out of it.

How to Find All Repeated Words in a Word Document

It is necessary to know how many versions of Windows 10 there are, to determine if you have the most recent and therefore the most current edition of Word.

Index(  )

1. What is called the repetition of words in a text
2. Find all repeated words in a Word document
   1. Word wildcards
3. How to easily check repeated words in Word
   1. Find repeating paragraphs in Word
4. Repeated words in a Word document and wildcards
5. How to underline all the same words in Word
   1. How to delete the same words in Word
6. How to find all the repeated words in a Word document using wildcards?

What is called the repetition of words in a text

There is no specific term for this problem, but we could use ‘redundancy’ or ‘catchphrase’. Redundancy refers to the tendency to extend an argument too long and is something that should be avoided in certain cases. On the other hand, the catchphrase is the use of phrases in a repetitive way.

Although the catchphrase is seen mainly in speeches, it can also sneak into our texts, if we tend to use a word too much. Redundancy serves a purpose if you want to express a complex message in an explainable way, but you have to be careful and the catchphrase should also be avoided at all costs .

One of the most common mistakes when writing a document is that sometimes repeated words can be written. Normally, Word’s auto-checker alerts you to this error by underlining repetition in red. But this is not infallible, if you have the correction tool disabled it is still possible to detect these errors very easily. Using the program’s wildcards.

Word wildcards

Wildcards in Word are quite useful tools when navigating and correcting a document. However, many users do not know how to use them and many more do not even know that they exist. To find all the repeated words in a Word document, you can make use of these wildcards and even lock the position of an image in Word.

How to easily check repeated words in Word

Without a doubt, the easiest way to find repeated words in a Word document is by using the underline tool. With this tool you can check the integrity of your text looking for words that you think you repeated a lot. We will show you this below.

Find repeating paragraphs in Word

You may have gotten confused and copied a paragraph into large text. Fortunately, you can find repeating paragraphs if you use the underline tool below. It is enough that, instead of writing a word, you paste the text that is repeated in the document .

Repeated words in a Word document and wildcards

To get a repeated word, the first thing to do is search for a word, right? For this we will use the Word tool ” Search “. This is in the ” Start ” section of the top menu. It should be noted that to use this type of search you must select the “Use wildcard characters” box in the Search and Replace window.

If a word is a sequence of letters arranged in a specific way. So the first wildcard to use would be [a-zA-Z]. In this way the search engine will consider all the letters of the alphabet taking into account upper and lower case. Similarly, within this sequence will be the vowels with their accents and the letter “ñ”.

With that joker you can already get a letter. Now, how to find a word? Well, to do that you must use this wildcard [aaZ] {1;}. This is translated as a redundant letter one or more times, counting capital letters, accents, and the letter ñ.

The <> characters placed at the beginning and end of the wildcard will indicate the beginning and end of each word. But since you want to search for repeated words, you will modify the wildcard to the following <[a-zA-Z] {1;}). By replacing the “greater than” characters with a parenthesis, you are saying that you want to search for words followed by a space.

How to underline all the same words in Word

Underlining words is simple, for this we must use the ‘Find and replace’ tool. This option is found in the ‘Home’ section with the name of ‘Replace’, in turn, you can press Ctrl + B to display the tool.

Make sure you are in the ‘Search’ tab and type the word you want to search for. At the top you will see the option ‘Highlight reading’ , There select ‘Highlight all’. Doing the above will highlight the word in the text so you can see all the times it is there.

How to delete the same words in Word

To eliminate the repeated words, we must also use the ‘Find and replace’ tool . Remember, you access it through ‘Start’, there click on ‘Replace’. The tool menu will be displayed, you must click on the ‘Replace’ tab.

In ‘Search’ write the term you want to remove from your text and leave the ‘Replace with’ section blank. You can do the process one by one, clicking on ‘Find next’ to see the word in each section of the text, to make the modification click on ‘Replace’. If you want to remove all the words , click on ‘Replace all’.

How to find all the repeated words in a Word document using wildcards?

As an extra point, you should know that wildcards also apply to other cases, such as inserting a YouTube video in a Word document , a useful tool to finalize the file together with the elimination of repeated words.

Now, if the previous wildcard only searches for words followed by a space , how to find all the repeated words in a Word document? For that case, the wildcard explained above would be modified to the following (<[a-zA-Z] {1;}) 1>.

If you can tell, the previous wildcard is now inside parentheses. In wildcard theory it says that parentheses are used to create search references. Therefore adding parentheses created a reference.

This is followed by a space and then 1 follows. This refers to the word to search for. That is, to the first group of parentheses. If there were more sets of characters the reference would be  2, 3, or the amount of group of parentheses that are.

And finally this character> refers to the end of the word. So if you use this wildcard, it will find the redundancy “his his” but not “his dream” . Finally, after finding all the repeated words in a Word document, you will want to delete all the repeated words.

Thus, in the Word search and replace window you must put the following wildcard in the search bar (<[a-zA-Z] {1;}) 1> and in the replace window you must put 1. In this way, the repeated word will be deleted automatically.

Use the word processor’s search function to locate text and more

Updated on December 15, 2020

What to Know

• Basic word search: Go to the Home tab. Select Find and enter the text for the search.
• Advanced search: Go to Home > Find. Choose the search drop-down arrow. Select Options and select your criteria.

This article explains how to search for text in Microsoft Word. The information applies to Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, Word 2010, Word Online, and Word for Microsoft 365.

How to Do a Basic Word Search in MS Word

Microsoft Word includes a search function that makes it easy to search for different elements in a document, including text. Use the basic tool to look for instances of a specific word, or the advanced options to perform tasks such as replace all instances of a word with another one or search for equations.

To run a basic search for a specific word or phrase in Word:

1. Go to the Home tab and select Find, or press Ctrl+F.

   In older versions of Microsoft Word, select File > File Search.

2. In the Navigation pane, enter the text you want to search for. A list of matching words displays in the Navigation pane and instances of the word are highlighted in the main document.

3. Cycle through the results in the Navigation pane in one of three ways:

   • Press Enter to move to the next result.
   • Select a result with the mouse.
   • Select the Up and Down arrows to move to the previous or next result.

4. Make any changes or edits to the document as needed.

5. Select the Down arrow to move to the next instance of the word.

Match Case, Whole Words Only, and More

Beyond searching for every instance of a word, you can get more specific about what you want to find. For example, to find whole instances of a word and not every word that contains the letter combination or to find instances of a word that aren’t capitalized.

Here’s how to do an advanced search:

1. Select Home > Find.

2. In the Navigation pane, select the Search drop-down arrow.

3. Choose Options.

4. In the Find Options dialog box, choose the description that best fits what you’re trying to find. For example, to find instances of a word with the same capitalization, select Match case.

5. Select OK.

Use Advanced Find

Many of the choices available in the Find Options dialog box are also available in Advanced Find. Advanced Find includes the option to replace the text with something new. Based on your selection, Word replaces one instance or all instances at once. You can also replace the formatting, or change the language, paragraph, and tab settings.

Find Instances of Other Elements

Other options in the Navigation pane include searching for equations, tables, graphics, footnotes, endnotes, and comments.

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This find/replace is based on Paul Beverley’s work, so full acknowledgement to him for teaching me how to do this via his YouTube videos and his free book.

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Some of my authors inadvertently type the same word twice (e.g. is is, the the), and it’s often hard to pick these up when editing. If you run spellcheck, you may find them, but there’s no guarantee of that. The find and replace below uses wildcards to find any instance of duplicated words, followed by a space or a common punctuation mark, and then replaces that with a single word and the trailing space or punctuation.

NOTE: This find/replace only finds words with the exact same case, so it will find ‘the the’, ‘THE THE’, and ‘The The’, but it won’t find instances where each word has the same letters but with different cases (e.g. ‘the The’, ‘The the’, ‘tHe thE’ etc.)

Steps:

1. Press Ctrl+H to open the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Click More, then select the Use wildcards option.
3. In the Find field, type: (<[A-Za-z]@)[ ,.;:]@1>
   (Note: There’s a space in there, so I suggest you copy this Find string.)
4. In the Replace field, type: 1
5. Click Find Next then click Replace. Repeat.

How this works — at least how I *think* it works:

• Find: Look for the start of any word (<) made up of any number (@) of letters ([A-Za-z]) followed by a space or punctuation ([ ,.;:]) then repeat that find (@1) until you can’t any more words that match the pattern (>).
• Replace: Replace the first element (the first of the duplicate words) with itself (that’s the 1 bit), which effectively deletes the rest.

[Links last checked December 2017]

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

Do you want to learn more about Microsoft Word? Check out our virtual classroom or in-person Word courses >

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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