Coffee Break Computer

Using Find and Replace with Formatting and Special Characters in Word 2007

Find and Replace can do more than handle the standard characters from the keyboard. It can also look for hidden formatting symbols, spaces, special characters, and formatting. The More>> button in the Find and Replace box gives more options to use with Find and Replace.

Have you ever pasted some text from an email or web page into Word, and ended up with extra spaces at the beginning of every line? Find and Replace can fix it. Or got a file to work with that was created by someone who didn’t really know how to use Tab or Centering or Page Breaks. Find and Replace can help fix that. Or you print a long document, and in proofing it you see some text looking bold where it shouldn’t. Find and Replace can find and get rid of it or change it for you.

Note: Use the Show/Hide ¶ to see any extra formatting symbols.

To Remove Extra Spaces with Find and Replace

1. Have a document with extra spaces in it open.
2. Open Replace (Ctrl +H).
3. In Find What: push the spacebar at least two times. (You want to leave all the spaces between words alone, so don’t use just one space here.)
4. Leave Replace with: blank.
5. Click Replace All. Go through the document as many times as needed to get rid of all the extra spaces.

Use Find and Replace to Get Rid of Tabs

1. Have a document with unneeded Tabs in it open.
2. Open Replace (Ctrl +H).
3. At the bottom of the Find/Replace box, click the More>> button.
4. Under Replace (at the very bottom of the box) click Special, then click Tab Character to make it appear by Find What:.
5. Leave Replace with: blank or type in a space if the tabs are separating words.
6. Click Replace All. All the tabs in the document should be gone.

Use Find and Replace to Remove or Replace Text Formatting

This example will remove bold text formatting.

1. Have a document with unwanted formatting in it open.
2. Open Replace (Ctrl +H).
3. At the bottom of the Find/Replace box, click the More>> button.
4. Click Format then Font.
5. In the Font box under Font Style, click Bold, then OK.
6. Under Find what:, Format: Font: Bold should display.
7. Click in Replace with:, then go back to Format then Font.
8. In the Font box under Font Style, click Regular, then OK.
9. Use Find Next to go where the Bold is, Replace or Replace all to remove it.

Use the No Formatting button at the bottom of the box to remove the Format: Bold from the Find and Replace. It needs to be removed from both Find what: and Replace with:, click the each box then click No Formatting to remove it.

Popularity: 4% [?]