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Using Find and Replace with Text in Word 2007

Many programs have a variation on Find, if not on both Find and Replace. Find (by itself) allows you to direct a program to look for and stop at specific characters. In most every program, Ctrl + F starts Find.

Replace takes finding the specific characters a step further, and allows you to replace them with something else. Ctrl + H opens the Find/Replace/Go To box to the Replace options.

In Word, Find and Replace can be run from the keyboard shortcuts or are found in the Home tab, in the Editing group. The only difference between the Find and Replace screens is the Replace with: section.

Using Find

If you are looking for something specific in a longer document, Find will take you to it faster than reading or scanning the document will.

1. Open the Find box.
2. Type in a word you’re looking for by Find what:.
3. Push Enter or click Find Next. Word will jump to each occurrence of the word by pushing Enter or clicking Find Next. When Word has gone through the entire document, a box that says “Word has finished searching the document” will appear.

One thing to remember is that Find will only look for exactly what you type in. So if you don’t type what you want in exactly as it appears in the document, it just won’t find it. One way around that is to use part of the word or name.

Using Find and Replace

Replace gives you the option of finding specific characters and having Word replace them with what you specify.

1. Open the Replace box.
2. Type in the word to look for by Find what:.
3. Type in the word to replace it with by Replace with:.
4. There are three button choices at the bottom: Replace, Replace All, and Find Next.
5. Replace will Find and Replace one instance at a time – this is the slowest but most controlled way of doing it. If you don’t want to replace, click Find Next to go to the next one.
   Replace All is very fast and will find and replace through the entire document.
6. Close the Find Replace box when finished with Cancel or the red X button.

Replace can be very handy, but can also create some problems if not used carefully. For example, if you were to want to replace every instance of “day” with “date,” you would need to find “[space]day” in order not to change “Monday” to “Mondate.”

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