Word search any character

The Problem:

Find and Replace isn’t flexible enough! I need to check references to a bunch of different product codes, CP408 through CQ917. As you can imagine, searching for «C» with «Match case» on finds me every capital C in the document. I want a better way!

The Solution:

There are two ways you can do this. The easiest way is to search for c^$^#^#^#, which finds a C followed by any single letter and then three digits. To find special items, use the codes explained in Table 3-1. You can enter them by clicking the Special button in the Find and Replace dialog box (see Figure 3-12) when the «Use wildcards» box is unchecked, but once you find how useful they are, you’ll find it quicker to type them.

Table 3-1. Special codes for Find and Replace

Figure 3-12. The Special pop-up menu in the Find and Replace dialog box provides an easy way to enter the codes for special items.

The other way is to use regular expressions, or combinations of text and wildcards. Check the «Use wildcards» box and enter C[P-Q] (in capitals, as it’s case-sensitive) in the «Find what» box, then click the Find Next button.

by updated Aug 01, 2016

Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Searching for Special Characters.

Word allows you to search not just for text, but also for special characters that normally do not print. If you are working with documents that use tabular material, you will find yourself searching for tab characters quite a bit. To search for tabs, follow these steps:

1. Press Ctrl+F. Word displays the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Click the More button, if it is available. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.

3. In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. For example, to search for a tab character enter ^t (it is important to use a lowercase t). Alternatively, you can click on the Special button and select a special character from the list.
4. Set other searching parameters, as desired.
5. Click on Find Next.

Often, you will be searching for other special characters such as breaks and paragraph marks. It can be faster to remember these and type them in rather then looking them up all of the time. The following is a list of the more common special characters:

You can also use many of these same special characters in the Replace With box when doing a search and replace operation. You cannot, however, use the special white space character (^w) in the Replace With box.

In addition, Word allows you to search for any character as long as you know its ASCII value. (You can find ASCII values for characters in the back of many programming books.) All you need to do is use the caret, followed by a zero and then the three-digit value of the character. For instance, if you wanted to search for a capital A, whose ASCII value is 65, you would use ^0065 as your search string.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen…

The question mark matches any single character; the asterisk matches any group of characters (commonly
called a text string). Word looks past the asterisk to see whether any other characters limit
the search.

For example, searching for wo*d finds text such as word, world, and
worshipped.

Press Ctrl+H to open Find and Replace dialog box:

To use wildcard characters, click the More > > button, and select the
Use wildcards checkbox in the Find and Replace dialog box:

These wildcards are handy for finding words that you don’t know how to spell.

For example, if you are not sure how to spell receive, you can type rec??ve. Word then locates
any word that begins with rec, followed by any two characters followed by ve.

Search Operators

• ? — Any single character.

  For example, d?g finds dig, dog, and dug, but not
  drug and ridge.

• * — Zero or more characters: finds a word with the specified characters and zero or more
  characters in place of *.

  For example, des*t finds descent, desert, destiny,
  dessert, and destruct and even excludes the, codes — to.

• < — Beginning of the word.

  For example, <tel finds telemarketing, telephone, and
  television, but not hotel and retell.

• > — End of the word.

  For example, ion> finds aggravation, inspiration, and
  institution, but not ionic and bionomics.

• @ — Preceding one or more: finds one or more of the characters immediately preceding the @
  sign.

  For example, ^[email protected]^t finds one or more paragraph break marks followed by a tab mark.

• [] — One of the specified characters.

  For example, b[aeiu]t finds bat, bet, bit, and but,
  but not debt and boot.

• [-] — Any character from the range.

  For example, [a-m]end finds bend, fend, lend, and
  mend (the first character in this case is a, m, or any letter between
  them),
  but not rend and end.

• [!] — Not: finds the text but excludes the characters inside the brackets.

  For example, t[!ae]ll finds till and toll but not tall and
  tell.

• [!a-z] — Any single character except the ones in the range inside the bracket.

  For example, m[!o-z]st finds mast and mist, but not most or
  must.

• {n} — Exact number of occurrences: finds the specified number of occurrences of the letter
  immediately before the {.

  For example, to{2} finds too and tool but not to.

• {n,} — Minimum number of occurrences: adding a comma after the number tells Word to look for
  at least that number of occurrences.

  For example, a{4,} finds four or more of the letter a in a row.

  Note: In this example, commas work as a list separator. If you see the Word message
  that an invalid character has been used, your configurations use another symbol as a list
  separator, usually, a semi-colon. Consequently, all list-delimiting commas need to be replaced
  (e.g., for {n, m} you would need to use {n; m}). See also
  how to change the list separator in Windows 10.
• {n,n} — Minimum and maximum number of occurrences.

  For example, 10{2,3} finds 100 and 1000, but not 10.

• () — Expression: lets you «nest» search expressions within a search term.

  For example, <(pre)*(ed)> finds presorted and prevented,
  but not repressed and precedent.

See also this tip in French:
Utilisation de caractères génériques pour rechercher.

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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“Wildcards,” in the context of Microsoft Word, are characters that allow you to refine a search within a document. But how can you use them? And which symbols can you use? In this article, we run through the basics of wildcards in Microsoft Word and how you can use them to search for specific information in a document.

Using Wildcards in Microsoft Word

The process for enabling wildcards in Word is straightforward:

1. Press Ctrl+H to bring up the Find and Replace dialogue box. 
2. Click on More >> and make sure the Use Wildcards box is checked.

Once enabled, you can also use wildcards in Word’s search-only feature (Ctrl+F).

To use wildcards after enabling them, all you have to do is add the relevant symbol to your search term(s). For example, to search for the words “dive” and “dove” at the same time, you would type “d?ve” into the search field since the “?” symbol can stand in for any character. Word will then search for all words that begin with “d” and end in “ve” with a single character in between, including “dive” and “dove.”

Now, let’s look at some more examples of useful wildcards.

Wildcards to Use in Your Searches

Key wildcards you can use when searching a Word document include:

• ? – You can use a question mark in place of any single character. For example, searching “g?t” will find “got,” “gut,” and “get,” but not “goat” or “gnat.” You can also add multiple question marks to stand in for a set number of unspecified characters (e.g., “g??t” would find both “goat” and “gnat”).
• * – You can use an asterisk in place of any number of characters. For example, “w*t” would find “weight,” “wet,” “what,” and even “when he lost.”
• [ ] – Square brackets will let you search for any one of the specified characters within. For example, “n[oi]t” would find “not” and “nit,” but not “net” or “nut.”
• [ – ] – Adding a hyphen between two characters within square brackets allows you to search for any character within the specified range. For example, “[d-s]ent” would find “dent,” “lent,” and “rent,” but not “bent” or “tent.”
• < – Using a less-than sign allows you to search for words beginning with the stated characters. For example, “<pre” would locate “premeditated,” “prematurely,” and “preview,” but not “impress,” “permission,” or “spree.”
• > – Using a greater-than sign lets you search for words ending with the stated characters. For example, “ing>” would find “walking,” “talking,” and “flying,” but not related words like “walked,” “talks,” or “flew.”

Wildcards can be very useful, especially when it comes to long documents, helping you find specific terms or check spellings for consistency (e.g., looking for “-ise” and “-ize” endings in a document). But the best way to be confident your writing is error free is to have it proofread, so why not contact the professionals today?