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Find and replace text

Go to Home > Replace.
Enter the word or phrase you want to replace in Find what.
Enter your new text in Replace with.
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.
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.
In the Replace With box, type the replacement text.
Select Replace All or Replace.
Tips:
- You can also open the basic Find and Replace pane with the keyboard shortcut CONTROL + H.
- 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.

You can find 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.
Notes:
- Select the arrow at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box to show all options.
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.
In the Find and Replace dialog box, select Find Next or Find All.

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.
Select in the box next to Replace with.
On the Format menu, select the replacement formatting. If a second dialog box appears, select the formats that you want, and then select OK.
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.
On the Special menu, select the special character that you want to find.
Select 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.
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.
On the Special menu, select the special character that you want to find.
Select in the Replace with box.
On the Special menu, select the special character that you want to use as a replacement.
Select Replace or Find Next.

Select View > Navigation Pane.
In the Navigation Pane, select the magnifying glass.
Select Settings , and then select Advanced Find & Replace.
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.
Select Find Next.
Tips:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.»
- 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:
1. Select the Replace tab, and then select the Replace with box.
2. Select Special, select a wildcard character, and then type any additional text in the Replace with box.
3. 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.

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	*	*sd** 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?

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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.

How to Use Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace Feature

Microsoft is one of the leading companies in the world. It’s because it prioritizes its customers and comes up with innovations that can make their lives easier and more convenient.

The Find and Replace feature on MS Word is a shining example of this effort.

You can use this feature to find specific words in your file and then replace them in case there are some last-minute changes. This can even be useful when you make mistakes in the doc while typing or want to accommodate those last-minute client changes.

We’ll show you how to replace text in Microsoft Word, depending on the computer device you use.

How to Change and Replace Text in MS Word on Windows

It’s no wonder that all Windows devices have built-in Microsoft programs considering it’s a product developed by the Microsoft company themselves. If you find yourself using the word processor often for making notes or presentations, you’ll be especially thankful for the Find and Replace functionality.

Here’s a short step-by-step guide to using the feature in MS Word on Windows devices:

Step #1 Open Microsoft Word on your Windows device.

Step #2 Click on the Home tab on your top menu bar. A secondary menu will appear on your screen.

Step #3 Select the Replace option located on the top-right-hand side of your screen. Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl + H. The Find and Replace pop-up box will appear immediately.

Step #4 Type in the phrase or word you want to locate in your Word doc in the Find what field under the Find tab.

Step #5 Click on the Replace tab on the top menu bar. Type in the word you want to update in the Replace with field.

On clicking on the Replace button, the changes you want will be made one by one in the Word doc. However, if you want to update all fitting instances at once, you can click on Replace All instead.

Microsoft Word will give you a confirmation of the replacements made in your Word doc. It’ll look something like this:

How to Change and Replace Text in MS Word on Mac

Now that we’ve covered Windows, let’s see how you can use the Find and Replace feature on a MacBook. Here’s how to proceed in MS Word when you’re using an iOS device:

Step #1 Open the Microsoft Word document on your Mac.

Step #2 Take your cursor towards the top of your screen until you see your Mac’s top toolbar. Click on the Edit tab. A dropdown menu will appear.

Step #3 Click on Find from the displayed menu options. You’ll typically see a Replace… option on your screen.

But if you don’t, simply press Shift + Command + H on your keyboard. A side navigation bar will appear on the left-hand side of your computer screen.

Step #4 Enter the word or phrase you want to replace in the doc in the Search for… field.

Once you’ve finished typing the incorrect word or phrase, type in the right word or phrase that you want to replace the incorrect one with in the Replace with… field.

Step #5 Click on the Find tab to locate the matches. Once you’re sure the match is right and highlighting the words you want to change, select Replace. This will replace every individual match one by one.

Again, if you click on the Replace All button, all the matching words and phrases will be changed at once.

After the changes are made, you’ll see an “All Done” message just below the Replace and Replace All buttons that indicate the replacement of the intended word or phrase.

Advanced Find and Replace Features: Everything You Need to Know

You can take this whole shebang of replacing words and phrases to the next level thanks to Microsoft Word’s Advanced Find and Replace option. In other words, you can use the Advanced settings to simplify the process further and make the results even more accurate.

Follow the previously stated steps to open the Find and Replace pop-up box. On it appears on your screen, click on More.

You’ll immediately see a slew of additional options like Match case, Use wildcards, Match prefix, Match suffix, and so on. Here’s how the Advanced Find and Replace settings look like:

Each one of these has its own unique functions. Let’s discuss them in more detail below:

Find whole words only

If you check on the Find whole words only box, MS Word will treat your search term as an entire word and won’t look for your search term within other words.

Example: If you’re searching for the word “stand,“ the search feature won’t show you the word “standard.”

Use wildcards

Use wildcards is one of the more advanced search options that allows you to use question marks, brackets, asterisks, and other similar symbols to modify your search.

You see, a wildcat is a short string of characters – or a character – that represents multiple characters in a search.

Example: <(int)*(net)>

Sounds like (English)

As the name suggests, the Sounds like option finds similar-sounding words to your search term. This is best for finding homonyms and words that have varying spellings.

Example: This is common for words that have both UK and US variants. For instance, you can have both “colours” and “colors” on a document.

Find all word forms (English)

This option allows you to look for the word you searched for, along with other instances that are either plural or in a different tense.

Example: If you search for the word “be” after enabling the Find all word forms option, you’ll also find the words “are“ and “is“ highlighted as they are the different tense forms of “be.”

Match prefix and Match suffix

Checking off the Match prefix or Match suffix fields will limit your search to words that have the same beginning or the same ending, respectively.

Example: Suppose you enable Match prefix. When you search for the word “love,” Microsoft Word will find the words “love“ and “lovely.“ However, you won’t find the word “beloved“ highlighted in the search results as it’s a suffix of love.

Ignore punctuation characters and Ignore white-space characters

Again, this search option is self-explanatory. It tells Microsoft Word not to take up spaces, periods, hyphens, and similar attitudes into consideration.

Example: After clicking on the search options, when you type in “color block”, you’ll also see “color-block.”

When to Use the Find and Replace Feature of Microsoft Word

The whole point of the Find and Replace function in Microsoft Word is to allow MS Word users to search for target text – whether it’s a specific word, a type of formatting, or a string of wildcard characters – and replace them with whatever you want.

Typically, here’s why you should use this feature:

When you want to maintain absolute consistency in your document
When you want to speed up typing and formatting tasks
When you realize last-minute mistakes and want to find and then replace your errors
When you’re writing a document that includes words with varying spellings. For instance, if you typically follow US English, and are typing a doc according to the rules of UK English, the Find and Replace feature would be super helpful to identify and change spelling errors.
Adding special characters to words
editing partial words and phrases
Correcting words that you may have misspelled in a hurry. For instance, if you type “h?t” instead of “hat” and enable Use wildcards, you’ll find it highlighted in your search.
Eliminating extra spaces
Changing the separator character in numerals
Reversing currency symbols

Concluding Thoughts

As you may have realized, the Find and Replace feature of Microsoft is a lifesaver, to say the least.

It can help you save tons of time, which would otherwise have been wasted in looking for errors and then replacing them. Whether you are a student, an intern, or the CEO of a company, this is a functionality that we all can be very thankful for.

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Из данной статьи вы узнаете, как использовать функцию «Найти и заменить» в Microsoft Word для поиска и замены слов в документе.

1

Откройте документ Microsoft Word. Для этого дважды щелкните по документу Word или откройте программу Word и выберите документ из списка недавно открывавшихся документов (если нужный документ есть в этом списке).
2
Поставьте курсор в начало документа. Для этого щелкните слева от первого слова документа. Функция «Найти и заменить» ищет слова, которые расположены только после курсора.
- Если вы хотите найти слово в определенном фрагменте текста (а не во всем документе), выделите этот фрагмент.
3

Перейдите на вкладку Главная. Она находится сверху слева на ленте инструментов Word (это синяя полоса в верхней части окна).
4

Щелкните по Найти. Этот параметр находится справа на панели инструментов в разделе «Редактирование». В левой части окна откроется панель поиска.
5

Введите слово, которое нужно найти, и нажмите ↵ Enter. Искомое слово будет выделено в документе.
6
Щелкните по ▼ или по ▲. Эти стрелки находятся справа снизу на панели поиска. Если щелкнуть по стрелке, курсор перейдет к следующему (или предыдущему) повтору искомого слова.
- Также можно щелкнуть по одному из результатов посередине панели поиска.
7

Щелкните по значку

. Он находится справа на панели поиска. Откроется выпадающее меню.
8

Щелкните по Заменить. Эта опция находится в выпадающем меню. Откроется окно «Найти и заменить».
9

Введите слово в строке «Заменить на». Эта строка находится в нижней части окна «Найти и заменить». Введите слово, на которое будет заменено слово, отображаемое в строке «Найти».
10
Щелкните по Заменить все. Эта кнопка находится в нижней части окна «Найти и заменить». Это приведет к замене всех повторений слова из строки «Найти» на слово из строки «Заменить на».
- Например, если в строке «Найти» ввести «банан», а в строке «Заменить на» ввести «яблоко» и нажать «Заменить все», все найденные (в документе или выделенном фрагменте) слова «банан» будут заменены на «яблоко».
- Чтобы заменить только некоторые (не все) повторения определенного слова, нажмите «Заменить» и заменяйте слова по одному. Возможно, перед этим вам придется поставить курсор в начало документа.
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1

Откройте документ Microsoft Word. Для этого дважды щелкните по документу Word или откройте программу Word и выберите документ из списка недавно открывавшихся документов (если нужный документ есть в этом списке).
2
Поместите курсор в начало документа. Для этого щелкните слева от первого слова документа. Функция «Найти и заменить» ищет слова, которые расположены только после курсора.
- Если вы хотите найти слово в определенном фрагменте текста (а не во всем документе), выделите этот фрагмент.
3

Перейдите на вкладку Главная. Она находится сверху слева на ленте инструментов Word (это синяя полоса в верхней части окна).
4

Щелкните по панели поиска. Она находится справа на панели инструментов Word.
5

Введите слово, которое нужно найти, и нажмите ⏎ Return. Искомое слово будет выделено в документе.
6

Щелкните по ► или по ◄. Эти стрелки находятся справа на панели поиска. Если щелкнуть по стрелке, курсор перейдет к следующему (или предыдущему) повтору искомого слова.
7

Щелкните по

. Этот значок находится справа от значка в виде лупы, который расположен слева на панели поиска. Откроется выпадающее меню.
8

Щелкните по Заменить. Эта опция находится в выпадающем меню. Слева откроется боковая панель.
9

Введите слово в строке «Заменить на». Эта строка находится в верхней части боковой панели «Найти и заменить». Введите слово, на которое будет заменено слово, отображаемое в строке «Найти».
10
Щелкните по Заменить все. Эта кнопка находится под строкой «Заменить на». Это приведет к замене всех повторений слова из строки «Найти» на слово из строки «Заменить на».
- Например, если в строке «Найти» ввести «мыло», а в строке «Заменить на» ввести «шампунь» и нажать «Заменить все», все найденные (в документе или выделенном фрагменте) слова «мыло» будут заменены на «шампунь».
- Чтобы заменить только некоторые (не все) повторения определенного слова, нажмите «Заменить» и заменяйте слова по одному. Возможно, перед этим вам придется поставить курсор в начало документа.
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Советы

Чтобы открыть окно/панель «Найти и заменить», нажмите Ctrl+H (Windows) или ⌘ Command+H (Mac OS X).
Если документ большой, поиск и замена слов может занять некоторое время. Чтобы прекратить поиск, нажмите клавишу «ESC».
Функцию «Найти и заменить» можно использовать для поиска как слов, так и форматов и специальных символов.

Предупреждения

Перед тем как воспользоваться функцией «Найти и заменить» сохраните документ на случай, если что-то пойдет не так.

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Let’s assume you’re a paralegal and you just finished typing a lengthy legal document or a contract for your client, only to discover that you misspelled your client’s name or a wrong company’s name multiple times throughout your document. And don’t have time to manually locate and replace every instance of the text. What would you do? Don’t panic – you can easily fix that with MS Word’s Find and Replace feature.

Find and Replace is one of the most useful features in Microsoft Word that can be used to find a character, a word, or phrase in a document and replace them. You can also find and replace text in a specific section of text or a whole document.

Not only can you find a particular word and replace it with another word, but you can also find text based on its formatting, using wildcards, and with matching prefix or suffix. It also allows you to find and replace text with specific formatting, non-printing characters, or special characters. In this post, you will learn how to find and replace text in MS Word.

Find Text in Microsoft Word

To start with, let’s see how to Find text in Excel using the navigational pane or the Find and Replace tool. Then we’ll explore how to use the Find and Replace tool to replace text based on different options.

Find Text

You can use the Navigation pane to search for a character, a word, or a group of words. And you can access this navigation pane from the Ribbon or by pressing a hotkey Ctrl + F.

To access, the Navigation panel (Find Command), first, open the Word in which you want to search for text. Then, go to the ‘Home’ tab, and click the ‘Find’ button from the Editing group in the Ribbon. Or you can press the shortcut keys Ctrl + F in the keyboard.

This will open up the Navigation pane on the left of the Window. Type the text or phrase you want to find in the ‘Search document’ text box in the Navigation pane and press ‘Enter’. As you type, the tool will show you all the related matches. In our example, we’ll type ‘Tate’.

The Find command searches for all the matching text in the document and highlights them in yellow. The navigation pane shows all instances of the search word (Tate) as a preview of the results

The tool not only highlights the exact words, it even highlights the partially matched words.

You can use the upward and downward arrows beside the text box to jump to the Previous or Next search result. Or you can click on one of the results below the search field to jump to it directly.

Instead of searching through an entire document for a text or phrase, you can also search a large document by headings. To do that, click the ‘Headings’ tab and select a heading in the Navigation pane to browse by headings in the document.

To search through pages in Word, click the ‘Pages’ tab in the Navigation pane and select one of the thumbnail images of all your pages that you want to see. Then, you can search for a specific text on that page.

Once you’re done editing the document, close the Navigation pane and the highlights will disappear.

Advanced Find

If you are looking for more specific words or phrases, for instance, words with a certain font or style, special characters, or only full words, you can use the Advanced Find feature to track them down. This tool lets you customize your search with various options. Here’s how:

Go to the ‘Home’ tab, click the downward arrow next to the ‘Find’ icon in the Editing group, and select ‘Advanced Find’. Or press Ctrl + H shortcut keys to open the Find and Replace tool.

Or you can even launch the Find and Replace tool from the Navigation pane by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the Search Document text box and selecting the ‘Advanced Find’ option.

The Find and Replace dialog box will appear. Here, you can do a basic search, but if you want to customize your search with more options, Click the More >> button.

When you expand the More button, you would find more options with which you can do more advanced searches.

Select one or more options in the Search Options section and click ‘Find Next’ to view the result.

Match Case: If the Match case box is checked, it searches for the text that exactly matches the uppercase and lowercase letters you type in the ‘Find what’ field.
Find Whole Words Only: This option finds text that is not partial or part of another word, it only finds the whole words that are exactly matched.
Use Wildcards: This option is the opposite of the ‘Find Whole Words only’ option. The wildcards you can use are single character (?) and multiple characters (*) wildcards. For example, when you are searching for “Wall*”, you’ll get Walls, Wallmart, or Wallpaper, etc.
Sounds Like: This option finds words or phrases that sound phonetically similar such as ‘eyes’ when searching for ‘ice’ or ‘ant’ for ‘aunt’.
Find All Word Forms: This option finds all variants of words (all verb forms). For example, when you search swim, you’ll get swim, swam, and swimming.
Match Prefix: This searches for words with the same prefixes. For example, search for hype, and you may get hyperactive, hypersensitive, hypercritical.
Match Suffix: This searches for words with the same suffixes. For example, search for less, and you may get endless, ageless, lawless, effortless.
Ignore Punctuation Characters: This option lets you ignore punctuation characters in a text when searching. For instance, finding the word ‘Mrs. Jones’ when you searched for ‘Mrs Jones’.
Ignore white-space characters: This option lets you ignore white spaces in between. For instance, finding the word ‘Days are good’ when you searched for ‘Daysaregood’.

We’ll apply few of these options and see how it works with an example.

Match Case

For example, let’s say we search the word ‘MAGAZINE’ in all caps without the match case option enabled. Type the word in the ‘Find what’ field and click the ‘Find Next’ button.

In the ‘Search’ drop-down under Search Options, you choose ‘Down’ to start looking from the top to bottom of the document, choose ‘down’ to start looking from the bottom to top of the document, or ‘All’ to search all over the document.

When you click ‘Find Next’, it will highlight the first instance of the word in grey. When you click ‘Find Next’ again, it will select the next instance of the word. As you click Find Next each time, it will highlight the matching word one at a time.

If you want to highlight all the instances of the word at once, click the ‘Reading Highlight’ button and select ‘Highlight All’.

You would get several matches with the word all highlighted in yellow.

But if we searched the same word (capitalized) with match case enabled, we would get no results. Because the tool only looks for the word that exactly matches the uppercase letters we typed earlier.

Find All Word Forms

In another example, if we searched the word ‘write’ with the ‘Find all word forms (English)’ setting enabled, we would get all variants of the word.

Word will find all verb forms of the word as shown below.

Advanced Find with Formatting

You can also search for certain word or phrase with specific formatting applied.

To find words with formatting, first, type the word in the ‘Find what’ box and click the ‘Format’ drop-down button at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box. Then choose the format in which you want to look for the word.

You can even find words with specific font format, paragraphs with specific alignment and format, tabs, words in a certain language, text frame, style, and highlight.

We are going to search for the word with a certain font format, so we are choosing ‘Font’. In the Find Font window, specify the format as shown below and click ‘OK’.

The chosen Format ‘Font: (Default) STXingkai, Italic’ will appear under the ‘Find What’ text box in the Find and Replace dialog box. Now click ‘Highlight All’ to find the matching words with that format.

As you can see, the tool only highlights the words with that specific font format, while it doesn’t highlight the same matching word in a different font format.

To clear the formatting for the search, click the ‘No Formatting’ button at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box.

Find Text with Only Formatting

You can even find texts with formatting alone. You don’t even have to type a word or phrase, you can just specify the only format of the text.

And the tool will find you all the words or phrases with the matching format.

The Find and Replace tool also lets you find non-breaking characters/special characters or words with special characters by choosing the character(s) from the ‘Special’ drop-down button at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box.

Find and Replace Text in MS Word

So far, you have learned how to find text and how to find text with advanced options, now let us see how to replace the found text.

The Replace function allows you to find a word or a group of words and replace it with something else or find a word based on text formatting and replace it with other text, or find a specific word and replace its formatting, or find and replace characters with other special characters or words.

Find and Replace Text

To find and replace a particular word or phrase for another, navigate to the Editing group in the ‘Home’ tab and click the ‘Replace’ command. Alternatively, you can also press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + H.

This will open the Find and Replace dialog box. In the Find and Replace dialog box, fill out the two fields:

Type the text you want to search for in the ‘Find what:’ field.
Type the text you want to replace it with in the ‘Replace with:’ field.

Once you enter the necessary texts, you can either click the ‘Replace’ button to replace the text one by one or ‘Replace All’ to replace all the instances of the word at once.

Replacing all the text together may cause errors in your document if you are not cautious. For example, if you are replacing all the ‘He’ words with ‘She’, it may also replace the words Head with Shead, help with Shelp, heat with Sheat, and so on. So sometimes, it’s better to replace them one at a time.

Click the ‘Find Next’ to find the first instance of the text highlighted in gray and click ‘Find Next’ again to jump to the next instance. Review each instance and click ‘Replace’ to exchange the currently highlighted text.

You can click the title bar of the Find and Replace dialog box and drag it out the way to see the results behind it.

Once you’re done, click the ‘Close’ button to close the dialog box.

Note: If you leave the ‘Replace With’ field blank, the search text in the ‘Find What’ field will be deleted from the document.

Advanced Find and Replace Text

If you are looking to replace more specific words such as words with punctuation, capitalization, certain font or style, or even special characters, you can use the advanced search options of the Find and Replace tool.

To access the advanced options of Find and Replace, click the ‘More >>’ button at the bottom of the dialog.

Here, you have various search and replace options that you can use to narrow down your search.

As we discussed earlier in the Advanced Find section, you already know what each option under the Search Options is used for.

Select one or more options under the Search Options and click ‘Find Next’ to find the matching words or click ‘Replace’ to replace one instance at a time or click ‘Replace All’ to exchange every instance at once.

Example:

As we mentioned before, this tool finds the combinations of characters of the given word, even as part of other words.

For example, when we search for the word ‘Tate’ in the document, it finds that combination of characters even as part of other words like ‘United States’.

And this is not ideal when we replace these words. Also if you hundreds of matches, it would take forever to replace words one by one.

To fix this, check the ‘Find whole words only’ option, to find the words that are not partial or part of other words, it only finds whole words that are exactly matched. Here, we also checked the ‘Match case’ option to make sure it matches the exact uppercase and lowercase letters too. Then, click ‘Replace’ or ‘Replace All’ to replace the words.

You can use the rest of the above options in a similar fashion to customize your search to find specific words.

Find Text and Replace Formatting

You can also find a particular word and replace it with the same word but with specific formatting or replace it with another word with formatting.

For example, we want to find and replace the whole word ‘Lytle’ with a specific font format. To replace formatting, type the word you want to find in the ‘Find what’ field and select the ‘Find whole words only’ option to search for only that whole word. Then, click the ‘Format’ button at the bottom of the dialog box and choose ‘Font’.

You can replace words with other formatting options such as Style, Paragraph, Frame, and so on.

In the Replace Font dialog, choose your desired format style such as font, font style, font color, etc. In our case, we are choosing ‘Elephant’ font and ‘Italic’ style. Then, click ‘OK’ to apply.

Back in the ‘Find and Replace’ dialog box, you can see the chosen formatting is set for the ‘Replace with:’. Since we are only replacing the formatting of the word, leave the ‘Replace with:’ field blank. Then, click either the ‘Replace’ or ‘Replace All’ button to replace the formatting.

Once you click the ‘Replace All’ button a message box will appear informing you how many replacements were made (In our case, 222).

As you can see, all the instances of the word ‘Lytle’ is replaced with specified formatting.

Find Text with a Specific Formatting and Replace

If you want to find a text that has a certain formatting style and replace it with another text, without changing the formatting or with different formatting, you can do it by applying that formatting to the Find word. Here’ how you do this:

For example, we want to find and replace the text ‘Leatherman’, that has particular formatting (Font: Old English Text MT, Style: Italic, Color: Blue, Accent 5), with the text ‘Lincoln’ (without changing the formatting).

First, type the text you want to search for (in our case, Leatherman) in the ‘Find What’ field. Then, click on the ‘Format’ button and choose the options as required (Font).

In the Find Font, dialog box, select the required formatting with which we’re going to find text. In our example, the text ‘Leatherman’ is in ‘Font: Old English Text MT, Style: Italic, and Color: Blue, Accent 5’ formatting. Once the options are selected, click ‘OK’.

Now the selected formatting options should appear under the ‘Find What’ text field in the Find and Replace.

Next, type the text you want it to be replaced with (Lincon) in the ‘Replace with field:’ and click ‘Replace All’. You can also add formatting to the replacement text if you want.

Once you click ‘Replace All’, all of the instances will be replaced and a prompt will show you how many replacements were made.

As you can see all the instances of the ‘Leatherman’ with formatting is replaced by the ‘Lincoln’ without changing the formatting.

Find and Replace Special Characters/Non-Printing Characters

The find and replace feature can also help you find special character characters and replace them with other special characters such as ®, é, ä, or any other character listed in the Symbol dialog. You can also find and replace non-printing characters such as manual line breaks, tab characters, paragraph marks, etc. You can even replace special characters with text and vice versa.

For example, if you want to find and replace the word ‘protege’ with ‘protégé’, type ‘protege’ in the Find what box and type ‘protégé’ in the ‘Replace with’ box. Then, click ‘Replace’ or ‘Replace All’ to replace them.

As you can see the found texts are replaced with replacement text with special characters.

Sometimes you want to replace manual line breaks (non-printing characters) with paragraph marks, in such cases, you need to insert respective character code in the ‘find what’ and ‘replace with’ boxes.

For example, we want to replace all manual line breaks in the documents with paragraph marks. The character code for a manual line break and paragraph mark is ‘^l’ and ‘^p’ respectively. You can either type the code or if you don’t know the code, use the ‘Special’ button to insert the code.

To insert non-breaking characters, first, select the text box where you want to insert. Then, click the ‘Special’ button at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box and select an item from the list. And the tool will automatically insert the respective character code in the text box.

In the example, we are choosing ‘Manual Line Break’ for the ‘Find what’ field.

And ‘Paragraph Mark’ for the ‘Replace with’.

Then, click ‘Find Next’ to see where the line breaks are located. Now, click ‘Replace All’ to replace all the manual line breaks in the documents.

As you can see below, the manual line breaks are replaced with paragraph marks.

In the similar way, you can also replace non-breaking characters/special characters with text and vice versa.

That’s everything you need to know about finding and replacing text in Microsoft Word.

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