Finding and Replacing Text


One way to ensure that the text in your documents is consistent and accurate is to use the Find feature of Word to search for every instance of a particular word or phrase. For example, if you were responsible for advertising a trademarked product, you would probably want to search your marketing materials to check that every instance of the product's name was correctly identified as a trademark.

Clicking the Find button in the Editing group on the Home tab displays the Find tab of the Find And Replace dialog box. After you enter the text you want to find in the Find What box, you can do the following:

  • Click Find Next to select the first occurrence of that text.

  • In the Reading Highlight list, click Highlight All to highlight all occurrences.

If you find an error in the document while conducting a search, you can make editing changes on the fly without closing the Find And Replace dialog box. Simply click the document, make the change, and then click the Find And Replace dialog box to make it active again.

If you know that you want to substitute one word or phrase for another, you can use the Replace feature to find each occurrence of the text you want to change and replace it with different text. Clicking the Replace button in the Editing group displays the Replace tab of the Find And Replace dialog box, which is similar to the Find tab. On the Replace tab, you can do the following:

  • Click Replace to replace the selected occurrence with the text in the Replace With box and move to the next occurrence.

  • Click Replace All to replace all occurrences with the text in the Replace With box.

  • Click Find Next to leave the selected occurrence as it is and locate the next one.

You can use other options in the Find And Replace dialog box to carry out more complicated searches and replaces. Clicking More expands the box to make these additional options available.

You can make a selection from the Search list to guide the direction of the search. You can select the Match Case check box to match capitalization and select the Find Whole Words Only check box to find only whole-word occurrences of the Find What text. If you want to check that your usage of two similar words, such as effect and affect, is correct, you can select the Use Wildcards check box and then enter a wildcard character in the Find What box to locate variable information. The two most common wildcard characters are:

  • The ? wildcard stands for any single character in this location in the Find What text.

  • The * wildcard stands for any number of characters in this location in the Find What text.

Tip

To see a list of the other available wildcards, use Help to search for wildcards.


Selecting the Sounds Like check box finds occurrences of the search text that sound the same but are spelled differently, such as there and their. Selecting the Find All Word Forms check box finds occurrences of a particular word in any form, such as plan, planned, and planning. You can match a prefix or a suffix, and you can ignore punctuation and white space. Finally, you can locate formatting, such as bold, or special characters, such as tabs, by selecting them from the Format or Special list.

In this exercise, you will find a phrase and make a correction to the document. Then you'll replace one phrase with another throughout the entire document.

USE the 05_FindingText document. This practice file is located in the Chapter02 subfolder under SBS_Word2007.

OPEN the 05_FindingText document.


1.

With the insertion point at the beginning of the document, on the Home tab, in the Editing group, click the Find button.

The Find And Replace dialog box opens, displaying the Find tab.

2.

In the Find what box, type The Taguien Cycle, click Reading Highlight, and then in the list, click Highlight All.

3.

Scroll to Page 2.

Word has found and selected all the occurrences of The Taguien Cycle in the document. (We dragged the title bar of the dialog box to move it to the side.)

4.

Click the document behind the Find and Replace dialog box, double-click the word the in the Taguien Cycle in the first paragraph (not the title) on Page 2, and then type The to correct the capitalization.

5.

Press to move the insertion point to the beginning of the document.

6.

Click the title bar of the Find and Replace dialog box, and then click the Replace tab.

The Find What box retains the entry from the previous search.

7.

Click the Replace with box, type The Taguien Cycle, and then click the More button.

8.

At the bottom of the expanded dialog box, click the Format button, and then click Font.

The Replace Font dialog box opens.

9.

Under Font Style, click Italic, and then click OK.

10.

Click Find Next, and then click Replace.

The selected plain text title is replaced with italicized text, and the next occurrence of The Taguien Cycle is selected.

11.

Click Replace All.

Word displays a message box indicating that six replacements were made.

12.

Click OK to close the message box, and then in the Find and Replace dialog box, click the Find tab.

13.

In the Find what box, click Reading Highlight, and then in the list, click Highlight All.

Word highlights six occurrences of the Find What text.

14.

Click Reading Highlight, and then in the list, click Clear Highlighting.

CLOSE the Find And Replace dialog box and then close the 05_FindingText document without saving your changes.




MicrosoftR Office Word 2007 Step by Step
MicrosoftВ® Office Word 2007 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft))
ISBN: 0735623023
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 129

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