Replace option in word

Home > Microsoft Word > How to Find and Replace in Word? 7 Simple Methods

(Note: This guide on how to find and replace in Word is suitable for all MS Word versions including Office 365)

Microsoft has a variety of features to help users troubleshoot any last-minute mishaps or perform any intricate functions with ease.

Usually, in Microsoft Word, we predominantly deal with documents of varying lengths and content ranging from a single paragraph to multiple pages.

Let us say there is a misspelled word and you need to find and change a particular text. So, how will you fix this?

To quickly fix typos, you can use the Find and Replace option in Word. 

In this article, I will tell you how to Find and Replace in Word using 4 easy steps.

You’ll Learn

• What Is the Find and Replace Option in Word?
  • Replace All
  • More Options
    • Match case
    • Find whole words only
    • Use wildcards
    • Sounds like (English)
    • Find all word forms
    • Match prefix and Match suffix
    • Ignore Punctuation and White Spaces

Watch this short video to learn how to Find and Replace in Word

What Is the Find and Replace Option in Word?

In a Microsoft Word document consisting of multiple pages, searching for a particular word manually can be an arduous process. And, having to change or replace all the particular words is even more difficult.

Here is where the Find and Replace in Word comes to save your time and effort. Using this option, you can just scroll through the entire document, find the particular word/words and replace it with the desired word easily.

I will tell you how to use Find and Replace in Word using an example. Consider you have an article of approximately 2000 words. It seems that the word “document” is to be replaced with the word “file” throughout the whole document. 

You can use find and replace in Word in 2 ways.

1. First, navigate to Home. Under Editing, select the Replace option.

The Find and Replace dialog box opens.

Note: You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H to open the Find and Replace dialog box easily.

As you can see, there are two text boxes in the Find and Replace dialog box.

1. In the Find what: text box, enter the text you want to find. In this case, we need to find the occurrence of the word “document” on all the pages. Enter the word “document” in the Find what: text box.

1. In the Replace with: dialog box, enter the text you want to replace the previous text with. In this case, we want to replace the word “document” with the word “file”. So, enter the word “file” in the Replace with: text box.

Note: Once you have entered what to find and what to replace in both the text boxes, you can just use the Find Next button to find the particular word throughout the document without replacing them.

1. Once you have entered the word to find and replace in both the text boxes, click on Replace.

When you first click the Replace button, Microsoft Word searches the document and highlights the first instance of the particular word.

Again when you click on Replace, the found word is replaced. The word “document” is replaced by the word “file” and Word highlights the next instance of the word “document”.

If you again click on Replace, the next instance of the word “document” is replaced with the word “file”.

Click on the Replace button again to replace the word, and the next instance of the word will be highlighted. This way you can replace all the words throughout the document. 

In case you don’t want to replace a particular word, just click on the Find Next button. This will leave the particular word and highlight the next instance of the word to be replaced.

Clicking on the Replace button replaces words one by one. Once all the words are found and replaced, Microsoft Word throws a pop-up saying “We’re finished searching the document”. 

Click on OK to remove the popup and go back to the Find and Replace dialog box.

Replace All

We wanted to change the word “document” to “file” throughout the document so we clicked on the Replace button again and again. The Replace All option is used to replace the particular text throughout the whole of the document.

To replace all the entries in the document with the required word, repeat steps 2 and 3 from the steps mentioned above. Enter the necessary text in both the Find what: and Replace with: text boxes. Click Replace All.

This replaces the text throughout the document and Microsoft Word throws a pop-up saying “All done”, along with the number of replacements made.

Note: Be wary while using the Replace All button as it changes all the entries in the document. If you ever feel like there might be some instance that need not be replaced, you can just use the normal Replace button to check and replace the words.

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More Options

Generally, while using the Find and Replace option, you just have to find the specific word and replace it with a word of your choice. But in some cases, Microsoft Word might not be able to detect and replace the particular word because of discrepancies in capitalization, punctuation, or if the said word is a part of another word.

So in these cases, you can use the More option to use the additional features of the find and replace option.

Clicking on the More>> button shows a variety of options with checkboxes. Let’s see about them.

Match case

Usually, Microsoft Word replaces the particular word irrespective of the case. If you only want to replace the word “document” with the word “file” and not the word “Document”, you can use the Match case option. This means that the word will be replaced only if the found word matches the case of the word you want to replace with.

Find whole words only

Find and Replace option replaces any word that matches with the word entered in the Find what: text box. Sometimes, Word just replaces the text even if it is part of another word. To avoid this, check the Find whole words only option. Microsoft Word only searches and replaces the text from Replace what: text box if and only if the found word is a whole word and not a part of another word.

For example, the word “line” will be replaced with “track” if and only if the found word is a complete word. The word “online” will not be replaced with “ontrack”, which changes the meaning of the sentence completely.

Use wildcards

Wildcards are symbols in Microsoft Word which help replace a character or a group of characters leaving the others intact. The commonly used wildcards are (*) and (?). Using a (*) replaces any character between the first and last elements whereas using (?) replaces only one element.

This can be a little tricky concept to understand. I’ll show you an example. If you want to replace any text between two letters t and e, you can use wildcards. Enter the wildcard element in the Find what: text box and the replacement in the Replace with: text box. 

In this example, the words beginning with t and ending with e are replaced with the word “tie” as a result of using the (?) wildcard.

Sounds like (English)

This option is used to find and replace any words that might be phonetically similar. For example, consider the words color and colour, center and centre, etc. Though the pronunciation is the same, the spelling differs. With the Sounds like option checked, either of the instances will get replaced with the word you enter in the replace text box.

Find all word forms

By using the Find all word forms option, Microsoft enables you to find and replace the words which maybe be a form of another word. 

For example, in the English language, auxiliary verbs contain multiple forms which change with the content. Be form words are: am, is, are, was, were, wheres have form verbs are: have, had, and has. Using the Find all word forms option, the words which may exist in other forms may also be found and replaced.

Using this option you can find and replace any similar word forms. For example, the “have” form of the verb contains have, has, and had. Likewise, ‘be’ form of words includes – is, was, were, etc. using this, the word forms can also be replaced.

Match prefix and Match suffix

This option helps you to find and replace in Word, the ones with the same beginning or ending. Consider you want to replace a part of the word “prove” and change it to “dive”. In such a case, you can toggle the checkbox and enter pro in Find what: text box and di in the Replace with: text box. When you click on Replace, Word replaces all the words that begin with pro and change them to “dive”. This is the same case as with the match suffix option.

Ignore Punctuation and White Spaces

This option acts as a filter to ignore any punctuation marks or white spaces that occur between texts.

Consider you want to replace the word “long-term”. This word is split by a hyphen, so entering “longterm” in the Find what: dialog box might not find and replace the particular word. Now, enabling the Ignore punctuation characters option leaves out the hyphen and is searched and replaced. This is the same case as with the white spaces.

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Closing Thoughts

In this article, we saw how to Find and Replace in Word using 4 easy steps. We also saw how to use Replace All and More options for an even better search.

The Find and Replace option serves as a more efficient and elegant way to search for the particular text and replace them with your desired text. This particularly helps if there are any last-minute mishaps or more work has to be done in a lesser amount of time. Additionally, using the More option helps you customize the Find and Replace in Word to be more efficient.

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Exchange one text string for another in any version of Word

Updated on October 29, 2021

What to Know

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

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

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

Find and Replace a Word

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

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

Change Capitalization in Microsoft Word

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

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

Advanced Options

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

Search Options

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

Replace Options

Word supports more advanced substitutions, too. Use special characters to substitute text markup with symbols. For example, replace a character code like & 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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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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Find and replace

To help you in finding some text in the document, Word offers two different options:

   1.   Using the Navigation pane:

Like in the most popular applications, to find a text in the document, you can use the Ctrl+F shortcut. That combination opens the Navigation pane in Microsoft Word:

If you have any text in the Clipboard or selected text in the document, it will automatically be shown in the search text box. You can type or insert any text you want to find and click Enter to show the results.

To see the next result, click Shift+F4, or use the Navigation pane and Next and Previous buttons for easy navigating between the next or previous results.

For example:

   2.   Using the Find and Replace dialog box:

To open the Find and Replace dialog box, do one of the following:

• On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the Find list and then choose Advanced Find…:

  

• Click Ctrl+H,
• On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the Replace button:

  

For example:

Word will show the next found result.

Advanced find and replace

To show the advanced find and replace options, do the following:

• On the Navigation pane, click the arrow down on the right side of the search text box and choose Options… in the list:

  

  Word opens the Find Options dialog box:

  

• In the Find and Replace dialog box, click the More >> button (it doesn’t matter, which tab do you open: Find or Replace):

  

  Word added several options that you can use to refine the search criteria:

  

The advanced find and replace options:

• Match case — Find and replace words that only match specific capitalization. For example, you can find one «Wolf» and 11 words «wolf» in the document.
• Find Whole words only — Avoid partial matches. For example, if you want to find «puff», Word doesn’t show the words «puffed».
• Use wildcards — Get partial matches. See Using wildcards for more details.
• Sounds like (English) — Find and replace words that sound like others. For example, «there», «their», and «three».
• Find all word forms (English) — Find and replace all verb tenses. For example, type «find», and Word will return «finds», «finding», and «found».
• Match prefix — Works with other settings to find and replace words with common prefixes or beginnings. For example, «be» returns «best» and «because».
• Match suffix — Works with other settings to find and replace words with common suffixes or endings. For example, «id» returns «said» and «did».
• Ignore punctuation characters — Ignore differences in hyphenation.
• Ignore white-space characters — Ignore spacing between characters.

The Format button — Find and replace page formatting options like Font types or colors, Paragraph formatting (left, right, center), or highlighted words.

The Special button — Find and replace page and character elements such as Em dashes, tabs, or Section Breaks. See Replacing special characters for more details.

The No Formatting button — Turn off formatting selections.

Highlight search results

On the Navigation pane, enter what you want to find in the search box to highlight all occurrences of the searching in the document and display them on the Results page of the Navigation pane:

If you use the Find and Replace dialog box, Word highlights only the next found result. To highlight all results, click the Reading Highlight button and choose Highlight All:

For example: