How to find specific words in word

To open the Find pane from the Edit View, press Ctrl+F, or click Home > Find. Find text by typing it in the Search the document for… box. Word Web App starts searching as soon as you start typing.

Searching with the Word 2010 Navigation pane
You can also use the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+F. Clicking the Find button or pressing Ctrl+F summons the Navigation pane. In the Find What text box, type the text you want to find. While you type, matching text is highlighted in the document.

How do I search all of my documents for a specific word?

How to Search for words within files on Windows 7

1. Open windows explorer.
2. Using the left hand file menu select the folder to search in.
3. Find the search box in the top right hand corner of the explorer window.
4. In the search box type content: followed by the word or phrase you are searching for.(eg content:yourword)

Where is the search box in word?

At the top of your Microsoft Office apps on Windows you’ll find the new Microsoft Search box. This powerful tool helps you quickly find what you’re looking for, from text to commands to help and more.

How do I insert a search button in word?

Click Customize the Quick Access Toolbar > More Commands. In the Choose commands from list, click Commands Not in the Ribbon. Find the command in the list, and then click Add.

How do I search for a Word in a document in Windows 10?

Click the Cortana or Search button or box on the Taskbar and type “indexing options.” Then, click on Indexing Options under Best match. On the Indexing Options dialog box, click Advanced. Click the File Types tab on the Advanced Options dialog box. By default, all the extensions are selected, and that’s what we want.

Can you search multiple Word documents at once?

The easiest and most convenient tool for searching text in multiple Word files is SeekFast. With this tool, you can quickly and efficiently search for a combination of words or phrases in your documents, and the results are sorted by relevance, similar to search on Google, Bing, and other search engines.

How do I find all Word documents in Windows 10?

Search File Explorer: Open File Explorer from the taskbar or right-click on the Start menu, and choose File Explorer, then select a location from the left pane to search or browse. For example, select This PC to look in all devices and drives on your computer, or select Documents to look only for files stored there.

How do I get a search box?

If your search bar is hidden and you want it to show on the taskbar, press and hold (or right-click) the taskbar and select Search > Show search box. If the above doesn’t work, try opening taskbar settings. Select Start > Settings > Personalization > Taskbar.

What we can search using find command?

You can use the find command to search for files and directories based on their permissions, type, date, ownership, size, and more. It can also be combined with other tools such as grep or sed .

What is the shortcut key for spell check in word?

F7
Open the document you want to check for spelling or grammar mistakes, and then press F7. You can also use the ribbon to start the check. Press Alt+R to open the Review tab, and then press C, 1 to select the Check Document option.

Why is find command used in MS word?

The Find command lets you enter a word. Each time you push the Enter/Return button on your keyboard or click the Find button, that word will be found and highlighted in the text on the Web page you are reading. This makes it very easy to find the keyword you are looking for without having to scan long passages.

How do I search for a text string in Windows 10?

If you’d like to always search within file contents for a specific folder, navigate to that folder in File Explorer and open the “Folder and Search Options.” On the “Search” tab, select the “Always search file names and contents” option.

How do I search for a specific file type in Windows 10?

Click Start and then go to File Explorer by expanding the Windows system folder. You can also simply type File Explorer in the Search bar. Click the View tab in File Explorer. Check File name extension box.

How do I search for text in command prompt?

How to Use the Find Command to Search in Windows

1. Open the Command Prompt Window with Administrative Privileges.
2. Switches and Parameters for the find Command.
3. Search a Single Document for a Text String.
4. Search Multiple Documents for the Same Text String.
5. Count the Number of Lines in a File.

How do I search multiple documents?

Search inside multiple PDFs at once

1. Open any PDF in Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.
2. Press Shift+Ctrl+F to open the Search panel.
3. Select the All PDF Documents in option.
4. Click the dropdown list arrow to show all drives.
5. Type the word or phrase to search.

How do I search for a word document without opening it?

Open File Explorer (aka Windows Explorer). Navigate to the folder containing the documents. Click in the search box in the upper right corner, below the ribbon. Enter the word you want to search for, then press Enter.

What is the search box in Windows 10 called?

Cortana is getting separated from the Windows 10 search bar, with Microsoft’s assistant getting a separate spot in the taskbar. The new functionality was released today in Windows 10 Build 18317 (19H1), the latest version of Microsoft’s Insider Preview in the so-called Fast ring.

Why can’t I use the search bar in Windows 10?

One of the reasons why Windows 10 search isn’t working for you is because of a faulty Windows 10 update. If Microsoft hasn’t released a fix just yet, then one way of fixing search in Windows 10 is to uninstall the problematic update. To do this, return to the Settings app, then click ‘Update & Security’.

Why is my search bar not working?

Use the Windows Search and Indexing troubleshooter to try to fix any problems that may arise.In Windows Settings, select Update & Security > Troubleshoot. Under Find and fix other problems, select Search and Indexing. Run the troubleshooter, and select any problems that apply.

How do I search for a file?

Work

1. Introduction.
2. 1Choose Start→Computer.
3. 2Double-click an item to open it.
4. 3If the file or folder that you want is stored within another folder, double-click the folder or a series of folders until you locate it.
5. 4When you find the file you want, double-click it.

• When you learn how to search for a word in Microsoft Word, you will be learning how to use the Find tool. However, there is also an Advanced Find feature that lets you customize your search further, and there is a Find and Replace tool that lets you replace instances of words and phrases.
• Aside from the method below that we use to search for a word in a Word document, you can also use a keyboard shortcut to launch the Find tool. Simply press Ctrl + F on your keyboard to launch it.
• The Find tool lets you search for whole words, phrases, or even letters. You can use it to find what you are looking for in your document, regardless of how much or how little of the information you enter into the search field.

Microsoft Word’s search tools come in a couple of different varieties. The basic search lets you locate specific words or phrases in your document, while the Advanced Find tool lets you do things like match case, use wildcards, and generally find text in most of the ways that you might consider.

You can search for certain words in Microsoft Word by clicking the Home tab, selecting the Find button, then typing your search term into the “Search” field.

This will then highlight each instance of the word that appears in the document, and you can click each of the search results in the Navigation column to jump to the occurrence of that word in your document.

But if you are trying to figure out how to search for a word in Microsoft Word, then you might be struggling to locate the correct tool. Our guide below will show you how to use the search tool in your Word file.

How to Search a Word Document

1. Open the Word document.
2. Select the Home tab at the top of the window.
3. Click the Find button in the Editing group of the ribbon.
4. Enter your search term into the search box, then click a result to go to that point in the document.

Our guide continues below with additional information on how to find a word in a document, including pictures of these steps.

How to Search for a Word in a Microsoft Word Document (Guide with Pictures)

The steps in this article were performed in Microsoft Word for Office 365, but will also work in other versions of Word, such as Word 2016 or Word 2019.

As mentioned earlier, you can also open the search tool by pressing Ctrl+F on your keyboard.

Step 1: Open your document in Microsoft Word.

Step 2: Click the Home tab above the ribbon at the top of the window.

Step 3: Click the Find button in the Editing section of the ribbon.

Note that there are down arrows to the right of the Find button and the Select button in that section that you can use for other options. For example, there’s an Advanced Find option on the Find drop down menu that you can use for additional search options to locate a particular word or words in the document.

Step 4: Type your search term into the search box in the Navigation pane on the left side of the window.

Results containing your search term will appear in the column. You can then click a search result to be taken to its location in the document.

The up and down arrows under the search field will allow you to quickly move between the different results.

Additional Information on How to Search for a Word in a Microsoft Word Document

• Other applications, including Microsoft Excel, can also take advantage of the Ctrl + F keyboard shortcut for finding information.
• If you have used older versions of Microsoft Word, then you might be used to the dialog box that previously appeared when you tried to search for a word. The Navigation pane has replaced the basic search tool, but that dialog box will still appear if you select the Advanced Find option from the dropdown menu.

• The search function in MS Word also displays a magnifying glass at the right end of the search box. If you click that magnifying glass you will see a menu with additional ways to search for words or other items in the document.
• The Find and Replace dialog box also has a “Replace” tab at the top of the window. If you select that tab you will be able to enter the existing word that you want to replace, then enter the word that you want to use to replace it.
• Once the Find and Replace dialog box appears and you start using that to search through Word documents, it’s possible that you will find that to be a better way to search through an entire document and customize what Word replaces. Fortunately this is a similar search function that exists in other Microsoft office applications so you will be able to use it and its advanced options for searching while you look through spreadsheets and slideshows.

Find out how to remove page numbers in Microsoft Word if you have a document that contains page numbers that you either don’t want or don’t need.

Additional Sources

Let’s delve even deeper into the ‘Find’ function, looking specifically at a number of options that can be accessed in the Word “Find” feature (CTRL+F) by clicking its “More” button.

In a recent issue of Office for Mere Mortals we looked at how to search within a Word document. There is a lot of hidden power accompanying the relatively simple process of finding text within a document.

Advanced Find

The clever Find features are in Advanced Find. Press Ctrl + F to open the Word navigation pane, click on the pull-down menu then Advanced Find …

It’s called Advanced Find but many long-time Word users will know it as the standard Find dialog that’s been in Word for many, many years.

Click on the More … button to see a lot of power in Word’s Find.

FIND WHOLE WORDS ONLY

‘Find whole words only’ is a selectable option in Word that can be accessed in the Find feature (Ctrl-F) by clicking the ‘More’ button to display more specific search features.

But what does it mean to find whole words only? Isn’t that what a normal search is meant to do? Well… yes and no. A ‘whole word’ is defined in Office as a group of characters surrounded on either side by one or more spaces or punctuation marks.

To demonstrate the difference between having the ‘Find whole words only’ option selected and not having it selected, I will use a very simple example. Feel free to try it for yourself in Microsoft Word.

Let’s pretend that you are searching for the word ‘ample’ out of the following short text: “This sample sentence is one way to demonstrate the ample finding flexibility of Office”.

There is only one instance of the word ‘ample’ within the text, searching without the ‘Find whole words only’ option would actually find 2 matches. The less obvious match comes as part of the tail-end of the second word of the text, which is ‘sample’.

To further demonstrate my point, the word ‘in’ does not appear within the sample sentence on its own using ‘Find whole words’, but would be found twice within the word “finding” with that choice off.

By selecting the ‘Find whole words only’ option, Office will omit matches to any search query that is found _within_ a word of the document. Such a search is less intensive for the program and will therefore be faster with large amounts of text.

Before you go setting this option, be forewarned that it will omit any plurals from your search results. Searching for the word ‘sport’ in the following text will not produce any matches: “Why are all the sports I want to watch on at the same time?”

USE WILDCARDS

A wildcard is a special character that you can use to represent one or more characters in a search string. Any character or set of characters can be represented by a wildcard character. It is really just another name for a “regular expression”.

With just a few special characters and the knowledge of what they represent, searching for strings that conform to a predefined grammar (or pattern) now becomes extremely easy.

The first step to using wildcards in your search terms is to select the ‘Use Wildcards’ option, which can be found in find dialog box after clicking the ‘More’ button. The ‘Match case’ and ‘Find whole words only’ check boxes are now unavailable (grayed out).

There are two ways to incorporate wildcards into your search query string. The first is to choose the particular wildcard character from a list. To do this, click the ‘Special’ pull-down menu and select the desired wildcard character from the resulting list. Then type any additional text into the ‘Find what’ box. The second way is to simply type in the wildcard character directly into the ‘Find what’ box!

The asterisk (*) is the most commonly used wildcard to search for a string of one or more characters. For example, just say you want to find all words that start with “a” and end with “m”. Then you could write “a*m” as your search term. Your results could be anything from “aim” to “antidisestablishmentarianism”.

The next most commonly used wildcard is the question mark (?), which can be used to substitute for any single character. For example, sat?n finds “satin” and “satan”.

SOUNDS LIKE… FO-NE-TIKS

The ‘Sounds like’ option is a type of search mechanism for words that may have been spelt phonetically. To make this point, searching for the word ‘phonetically’ with the ‘Sounds like’ option switched on, will find all of the words that would sound like the word ‘phonetically’ if you were to say them out aloud. As a test, I wrote down ‘fonetikalee’ in a document and searched for the word ‘phonetically’ with the ‘Sounds like’ option activated. The find feature was indeed able to determine that I was searching for the word ‘fonetikalee’.

This function may be of use for people who type up conversations between people in real-time. If someone uses a word you are not familiar with in such a situation, you don’t really have the time find out how to spell it properly. In such a situation, the common solution would be to simply type it phonetically (as it sounds) and then move on. Sometime after scribing the conversation, you may have a flash of enlightenment and realize what word the person actually said.

Instead of scrolling through pages of text to find it and change the potentially numerous incarnations of phonetic spelling, you can simply type in the correct word to the search facility with the ‘Sounds like’ option selected, and hope that your phonetic spelling was sufficient for the ‘Sounds like’ search algorithms to pick up.

FIND ALL WORD FORMS – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSE

The ‘Find all word forms’ option has a simple, but powerful function. It acts by finding all possible tenses of the search word.

For example, if I searched for “run”, then both “run” and “ran” could be potential search results.

Similarly, searching for “talk” could have both “talk” and “talked” as potential search results.

Searching for “laugh” on the other hand, could have “laugh”, “laughed” and “laughing” as potential search results.

READER QUESTION: HOW DO YOU FIND A SPACE?

A question from an OfMM reader recently queried us how to find a space within a document. This is quite simply a case of typing a space into the ‘Find what’ text box and clicking the ‘Find Next’ button. This will find each and every space from the start to the end of the document. A useful application of this would be to insert two spaces in the “Find what” box in order to any occurrences of two consecutive spaces within a document, in order to ensure consistency of spacing between sentences.

Another way of doing this was mentioned in passing in the last OfMM newsletter in the section entitled “Strange Characters”. Selecting the ‘Special’ pull-down list in the Find dialog box will bring up a list of special search character types. The last option on this list is called ‘White-space’ and as the name suggests, can be used to find groups of white space within the search area. This is equivalent to typing /w into the ‘Find what’ text box.

THE ‘GO TO’ TAB

Another way of quickly accessing a certain area of a document, or even jumping through a document in regular increments, is to use the ‘Go To’ tab on the Find dialog box.

On this tab you can select between a number of document elements including: page, section, line, bookmark, comment, footnote, endnote, field, table, graphic, equation, object, and heading.

Then simply jump through the document For example, if the page option has been selected, you can type in the page you wish to ‘Go To’ in the ‘Enter page number’ text box. Then click the ‘Next’ button and you will be taken there.

An interesting function is to go to the heading in the document. If you have headings few and far between, then this is a useful tool. You have to make sure that your headings are formatted as a “Heading” within word, and aren’t simply bolded or formatted “Normal” text.

In this article, we will offer you 2 quick ways to find or delete sentences containing specific text in your Word.

It’s known to all that we can use the “Find and Replace” function in Word to easily find all occurrences of specific words. Then we will have no problem in highlighting, replacing or removing them. As you see, the target is a word or a phrase. Today, however, we are delighted to tell you the macro way to find or delete sentences containing certain text.

Method 1: Find or Delete Sentences Containing Specific Text

1. To begin with, press “Alt+ F11” to trigger the VBA editor in Word.
2. Next create a new module by clicking “Normal”.
3. Then click “Insert” and choose “Module” to get a new one.
4. And open the module with double click.
5. Now paste the following codes:

Sub DeleteSentencesContainingSpecificWords()
  Dim strTexts As String
  Dim strButtonValue As String
 
  strTexts = InputBox("Enter texts to be found here: ")
 
  With Selection
    .HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
 
    '  Find the entered texts.
    With Selection.Find
      .ClearFormatting
      .Text = strTexts
      .Replacement.Text = ""
      .Forward = True
      .Wrap = wdFindContinue
      .Format = False
      .MatchCase = False
      .MatchWholeWord = False
      .MatchWildcards = False
      .MatchSoundsLike = False
      .MatchAllWordForms = False
      .Execute
    End With
 
    Do While .Find.Found = True
      '  Expand the selection to the entire sentence.
      Selection.Expand Unit:=wdSentence
      strButtonValue = MsgBox("Are you sure to delete the sentence?", vbYesNo)
      If strButtonValue = vbYes Then
        Selection.Delete
      End If
      .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
      .Find.Execute
    Loop
  End With
End Sub

1. Next click “Run”.
2. There will be an input box, asking you to enter text. Just type the common text that all sentences contain. Click “OK”.
3. Then you shall see a sentence containing the text in selection with a message box prompting up. Click “Yes” to delete the sentence and “No” to keep it.
4. After the confirmation, the next sentence with designated text is in selection. And there is the confirming box, too. Namely, the macro takes you to step through the whole document, finding target sentences and asking your confirmation every time.

Method 2: Find or Delete Sentences Containing Any Text on a List

With the macro in method 1, you can only search for one word or phrase a time. Certainly, you can run the macro repeatedly to search for find multiple instances of words or phrases. To meet the need of multiple searching, we will provide you another macro.

1. First put all target texts on a new document. Make sure each piece of text occupies one paragraph with no trailing space. Close and save the document.
2. Next install and run a macro with the exact steps in method 1.
3. Then replace macro with this one:

Sub DeleteSentencesContainingSpecificWordsOnAList()
  Dim objListDoc As Document, objTargetDoc As Document
  Dim objParaRange As Range
  Dim objParagraph As Paragraph
  Dim strFileName As String, strButtonValue As String
  Dim dlgFile As FileDialog
 
  Set dlgFile = Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker)
 
  With dlgFile
    If .Show = -1 Then
      strFileName = .SelectedItems(1)
    Else
      MsgBox "No file is selected! Please select the target file."
      Exit Sub
    End If
  End With
  Set objTargetDoc = ActiveDocument
  Set objListDoc = Documents.Open(strFileName)
  objTargetDoc.Activate
 
  For Each objParagraph In objListDoc.Paragraphs
    Set objParaRange = objParagraph.Range
    objParaRange.End = objParaRange.End - 1
 
    With Selection
      .HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
 
      '  Find target words.
      With Selection.Find
        .ClearFormatting
        .Text = objParaRange
        .MatchWholeWord = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .Execute
      End With
 
      '  Expand the selection to the entire sentence.
      Do While .Find.Found
        Selection.Expand Unit:=wdSentence
        strButtonValue = MsgBox("Are you sure to delete the sentence?", vbYesNo)
        If strButtonValue = vbYes Then
          Selection.Delete
        End If
        .Collapse wdCollapseEnd
        .Find.Execute
      Loop
    End With
  Next objParagraph
End Sub

1. Now the “Browse” window shall open. Choose the document just saved and click “Open”.
2. The following procedure is as same as that in method 1.

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In addition to simply searching for a specified word or phrase, you can use Word’s advanced search features to search using wildcards or search for special characters.

Search with Wildcards

A “wildcard” is a character (or a short string of characters) that represents multiple characters in a search.

1. Click the Find list arrow.
2. Select Advanced Find.
3. Click the More button.

   

4. Click the Use wildcards check box.

   If you’re familiar with wildcards, you can type them out as part of the search phrase. You can also insert them from a menu.

5. (Optional) Click the Special menu to select a wildcard.

   The wildcard syntax is shown at the top of the list. The syntax can get tricky, and wildcards can be tough to understand without examples. The table on the next page should help explain some common examples.

6. Enter a search phrase in the Find what text field.
7. Click Find Next.

   

The search is conducted. Make sure to be careful if you’re using wildcard searches to find and replace text. Keep an eye on the results in case something unexpected is found.

Some common wildcards are shown in the following table.

Search for Special Characters

You can also specifically search for special characters, such as line and page breaks, paragraph marks, fields, graphics, and dashes.

1. Click the Find list arrow.
2. Select Advanced Find.
3. Click the More button to expand the dialog box, if necessary.

   If you’ve expanded the Find and Replace dialog box in a recent search, without collapsing it back down, it will open in an expanded state.

   

4. Click in the Find what text field.
5. Click the Special button.

   The Special menu lists the special formatting characters that can be searched for.

6. Select a special character.

   When you select a special character from the menu, the text code for that special character is inserted.

7. Click the Find Next button.

   

The next instance of the selected special character is found.

You can find and replace one special character with another (to replace section breaks with page breaks, for example) on the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.

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