Finding and Replacing Text Automatically

Any time you find yourself about to embark on a time-consuming hunt through a long document for a word or phrase, or for certain formatting, see whether Word's Find and Replace features can do the work for you.

Finding Text

If you frequently type long documents, you have probably had the experience of scrolling through each page trying to find all of the places where you used a particular word or phrase. Word can help you with this process, searching for text much more quickly and accurately than we humans can.

1. Choose Edit, Find (or press Ctrl+F) to display the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box (see Figure 8.4).

   Figure 8.4. Use the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box to search for text.

   

2. Type the text that you want to find in the Find What text box.

3. Click the Find Next button. Word highlights the first occurrence of the word.

4. Continue to click the Find Next button to look for more matches.

5. Click OK when Word informs you that it has found all the matches.

6. Click the Cancel button in the Find and Replace dialog box.

If you want to be more specific about what text you're looking for, click the More button to expand the dialog box and display more options (see Figure 8.5). To collapse the dialog box again, click the Less button.

Figure 8.5. Click the More button to expand the dialog box, and the Less button to collapse it.

By default, Word searches the entire document for the Find What text. If you want to search up or down from the location of the insertion point, change the option in the Search list from All to Up or Down.

Replacing Text

Sometimes you not only need to find text, you also have to replace it with something else. Word's Replace feature takes the tedium out of making the same change in several places.

Follow these steps to search for text and replace it with something else:

1. Choose Edit, Replace (or press Ctrl+H) to display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box (see Figure 8.6).

   Figure 8.6. Use the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box to search for and replace text.

   

2. Type the text that you want to find in the Find What text box.

3. In the Replace With text box, type the text that you want to replace the Find What text.

4. Click the Find Next button.

5. Word highlights the first occurrence of the word. To replace it, click the Replace button.

6. To skip this instance without making the change, click the Find Next button.

7. Continue this process. If you don't need to confirm every replacement, click the Replace All button.

8. Click OK when Word informs you that it has found all the matches.

9. Click the Close button in the Find and Replace dialog box.

If you change your mind about a replace operation after completing it, you can click the Undo button in the Standard toolbar to undo the replacements one by one if you used the Replace button, or all at once if you used the Replace All button.

If you like, you can customize your find and replace operation by using the options in the expanded version of the Find and Replace dialog box.

Finding and Replacing Formatting

You can use Find and Replace as a quick way to search for and replace formatting in your document.

To modify formatting with Find and Replace, follow these steps:

1. Display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box, and click in the Find What text box. (If the dialog box isn't already expanded, click the More button.)

2. Click the Format button, and click the command that leads to the formatting option you want to search for. For example, if you want to search for boldface, click the Font command.

3. Select the desired formatting option in the dialog box that appears, and click OK.

4. The formatting is now listed beneath the Find What box.

5. Click in the Replace With text box and use the Format button to specify the formatting that you want to replace the Find What formatting. If you want to strip off the Find What formatting without replacing it, choose the default formatting. For example, to remove boldface, you would choose Not Bold in the Font Style list in the Font dialog box.

6. Continue with the usual replace procedure.

If you like, you can combine formatting and text in the Find and Replace dialog box. For example, you could type the words Puget Sound in the Find What text box, and then type Puget Sound in the Replace With text box and specify a single underline. This would search for and underline every instance of Puget Sound in your document.