Have you ever finishing typing a letter, report or presentation only to discover that you misspelled a person’s name or had the wrong company listed multiple times throughout your document? No worries—it’s an easy fix. Using Word’s Find and Replace feature, you can quickly locate and replace text. Let’s see how it works.
Switch over to the “Home” tab on Word’s Ribbon and then click the “Replace” button.
This opens Word’s Find and Replace window. In the “Find What” box, type the word or phrase you want to locate. If you only want to find text in your document, you can go ahead and click the “Find Next” button to have Word jump to the next occurrence of that word. Keep clicking it to browse through all the results.
If you want to replace the text you find with something else, type the replacement text into the “Replace With” box. You can enter up to 255 characters in the both the “Find What” and “Replace With” boxes, by the way.
In this example, let’s say we want to replace the name “Williams” with the name “Billingsly”, so we’ve typed that text into the respective boxes. Next, we’d click the “Find Next” button to have Word locate the first instance of the text in the “Find What” box.
Word jumps the document to that point and highlights the result in gray, still keeping the Find and Replace window on top for you. Click the “Replace” button to replace the currently selected result with whatever text is in the “Replace With” box.
To replace all instances at once without stopping and reviewing each one, you can click the “Replace All” button.
Be careful when using “Replace All” because it will automatically replace all instances, including those you might not want to replace. In the example below, there are three more instances of “Williams,” but we only want to replace the next two. In this case, we would only click “Replace” for the second and third instance.
If there is a particular instance where you don’t want to replace the text, click “Find Next” as many times as needed until you come to an example where you need to replace text.
To exit from Find and Replace, click the “Cancel” button.
Of course, since it is Word we’re talking about here, there are also lots of other things you can do to make your searches more sophisticated:
- Use wildcards in your searches to narrow them down to more specific results.
- Search directly within Word’s Navigation pane to have Word show you which headings have your search terms included under them.
- Replace double spaces between sentences with single spaces.
- Search for specific formatting or special characters.
The basic of searching and replacing text in Word are pretty straightforward, but there’s a lot you can do with it once you start digging.
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Overview of How to Find and Replace Text in Word:
You can find and replace text in Word using the commands in the “Editing” button group on the “Home” tab of the Ribbon. This button group contains several commands to help you quickly find and replace document content. This can be very useful for quickly revising standard documents that need minor, repetitive text changes.
How to Find Text in Word:
To find text in Word, click the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Then click the “Find” button in the “Editing” button group. Doing this then opens the “Navigation” pane at the left side of the document window and shows the “Search Document” search box at the top of the pane.
Type the word or phrase to find in the document into the search box. Word then automatically finds and highlights the text you type. It also shows matching result locations in the results pane below the search box. You can click any result in the pane to move to that document section. To clear your search results when finished, click the small “x” button at the right end of the search box.
How to Find and Replace Text in Word:
To find and replace text in Word, click the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Then click the “Replace” button in the “Editing” button group. Doing this then opens the “Find and Replace” dialog box and shows its “Replace” tab. Type the text to find into the “Find what:” field on this tab. Then enter the text with which to replace the found text into the “Replace with:” field. Then click the “Find Next” button to move to the next occurrence of the text found in the document. The text appears selected.
To then replace it with the text you entered, click the “Replace” button. You can then continue to click the “Find Next” button and the “Replace” button to move through the document, replacing the text. Alternatively, to replace all instances of the found text with the replacement text you entered throughout the document at once, click the “Replace All” button.
How to Perform an Advanced Find in Word:
To perform an advanced find of document content in Word, you can also click the “Find” tab in the “Find and Replace” dialog box. Alternatively, to perform an advanced find in Word, click the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Then click the drop-down arrow to the right of the “Find” button in the “Editing” button group. Then select the “Advanced Find…” command from the button’s drop-down menu to also access this same tab.
How to Set Advanced Find Options in Word:
To access the advanced options on either the “Find” or “Replace” tabs, click the “More>>” button at the bottom of either tab. The advanced search options then appear at the bottom of the dialog box. To enable or disable these options when performing your search, check or uncheck the checkboxes in the “Search Options” section.
How to Find Formatted Text in Word:To find content with specific formatting applied, click the “Format” drop-down. Then choose an option from the list. A dialog box specific to the type of formatting you chose then opens. Choose the options for which to search and then click the “OK” button. The “Format:” you chose then appears below the “Find what:” field. Any search you then perform finds the specific formatting options, as well as the search term[s]. To remove any applied formatting from the search, click the “No Formatting” button.
How to Find Special Characters in Word:To choose a special character for which to search in the document, click the “Special” drop-down. Searching for a special character works the same as a text search. After choosing the special character for which to search, click the “Find Next” button to move to the next instance of that character in your document. To hide the advanced options on either the “Find” or “Replace” tabs, click the “” button at the bottom of either tab.
- To find content with specific formatting applied, click the “Format” drop-down and choose one of the options from the list.
- A dialog box specific to the formatting you chose opens.
- Then choose the options for which to search and click the “OK” button.
- The “Format:” you chose appears in the labeled area below the “Find what:” text box.
- Any search you enact includes the specific formatting options you chose as well as the search term[s].
- To remove any applied formatting from the search, click the “No Formatting” button.
- To choose a special character for which to search in the document, click the “Special” drop-down and choose a character from the list.
- Click the “Find Next” button to move to the next instance of that character in your document.
- To hide the advanced options on either the “Find” or “Replace” tabs, click the “ R [Alt then H then R]. The Find and Replace dialog box appears as follows [with the Replace tab selected]: