How to Use Find and Replace in Word
(Note: Suitable for users of Word, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 and Word for Microsoft 365.)
Objective
Use the Find and Replace tool to search for words in a document based on specific criteria and replace them with something else.
The Find and Replace in Word Explained
If we need to update text in a Word document quickly, we don’t need to do this manually. Think about how long that would take. For example, if we need to replace every occurrence of ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’ with ‘United States of America’, that could take a while, particularly if it’s a long document.
This is where the Find and Replace tool is our best friend! Using Find and Replace, we can specify the text we want to find and then specify what we want to replace it with. Word will check through the document and replace all occurrences in one go, saving a great deal of time.
One of the coolest things about the Find and Replace tool is that we have so many options to get as detailed as we need. For example, we can set Find and Replace to look for words specifically in upper or lower case. We can use wildcards. We can replace characters like paragraph markers and hyphens and even replace text based on how it’s formatted.
It’s a very versatile tool and an absolutely essential skill in Word.
- Open Find and Replace
- Simple Find and Replace
- Advanced Find and Replace
- Find and Replace Formatting
- Find and Replace Special Characters
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Open Find and Replace
Find and Replace is located on the Home tab.
- Click the Home tab.
- From the Editing group, click Replace.
- Alternatively, we can press the keyboard shortcut, CTRL+H.
Simple Find and Replace
A simple find and replace is characterized by searching for a particular word and replacing it with something else.
Let’s replace the word ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’ with ‘United States of America’.
- In the Find what field, type ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’.
- In the Replace with field, type ‘United States of America’.
At this point, we can choose to Replace or Replace All. Replace will replace the first occurrence of the search term, whereas Replace All will replace all occurrences.
- Click Replace All.
Word will confirm the number of replacements.
- Click OK.
Advanced Find and Replace
Sometimes, the find and replace we need to perform is a little more complex than simply searching for a word and replacing it with another. This is where we use the advanced options.
We can access advanced Find and Replace options by clicking More.
Match Case
This option finds the exact case for your word or phrase. For example, let’s say we want to replace the word ‘Apple’ with ‘Apples’, but we don’t want to replace the word ‘apple’. By checking the Match case box, Word will only find those instances with a capital ‘A’.
Find Whole Words Only
This option finds matches that are whole words, not parts of words. For example, maybe we want to find the word ‘mail’ and replace it with ‘email’, but we don’t want to find ‘mailbox’ or ‘mailing’.
By checking this box, Word will only find instances of ‘mail’ where it exists on its own.
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Use Wildcards
A wildcard is a special character that can substitute any other character. The most common wildcard characters are asterisk (*), question mark (?), and tilde (~).
Asterisk
Wildcards are useful when we need to do a partial match.
An asterisk will search for the following:
| st* | matches any word that begins with ‘st’ such as ‘start’, ‘stop’, ‘star’, etc. |
| *st | matches any word that ends with ‘st’ such as ‘first’, ‘thirst’, ‘most’, etc. |
| *st* | matches any word that contains ‘st’ in any position such as ‘thirsty’, ‘feisty’, ‘astray’, etc. |
Question Mark
A question mark represents any character.
| ? | represents any string containing 3 groups of 4 characters separated with a hyphen, such as ABCD-EFGH-IJKL, 0001-6895-0039, etc. |
| ?? | substitutes any two characters, e.g., “st”, “10”, “c*”, etc. |
| ????-????-???? | represents any string containing 3 groups of 4 characters separated with a hyphen such as ABCD-EFGH-IJKL, 0001-6895-0039, etc. |
| c?ime | matches crime and chime. |
Tilde
A tilde placed before a wildcard character turns it into a literal asterisk or question mark. So, typing ~? will include the question mark in the search.
| *~? | finds text that ends with a question mark, e.g. ‘How are you?’, ‘What?’, etc. |
| *~** | finds text that contains an asterisk, e.g., *a, *ab. The first and third asterisks are wildcards, whereas the second is part of the search string. |
Sounds Like (English)
This option finds words that sound the same. For example, we could type ‘Ashley’, and it would find similar instances of the word like ‘Ashlee’, ‘Ashleigh’, ‘Ashlea’ etc.
These are just a few of the options we have for executing an advanced find and replace. We can also find all word forms, ignore punctuation, and ignore white space characters.
Find and Replace Formatting
In the examples so far, we have been searching for text strings and replacing them. However, we can also search for formatting.
For example, maybe we want to find all occurrences of words that have bold formatting and replace them with red font and italics.
- Press CTRL+H to open the Replace dialog box.
- Click in the Find what field.
- Click the More button.
- Click Format.
- Click Font.
- Choose the formatting to search for e.g., Bold.
- Click OK.
- Click in the Replace with field.
- Click the More button.
- Click Format.
- Click Font.
- Choose the font properties to replace with, e.g., red, italics.
- Click OK.
- Click Replace All.
Find and Replace Special Characters
We can use Find and Replace to replace special characters. For example, maybe we have too much space in between each paragraph in a document, and we would like to find all double paragraph marks and replace them with single paragraph marks.
- Press CTRL+H to open the Replace dialog box.
- Click in the Find what field.
- Click the More button.
- Click Special.
- Choose Paragraph Character from the list.
We need to repeat this process as we are searching for double-paragraph marks.
- Click Special.
- Choose Paragraph Character from the list.
- Click in the Replace with field.
- Click Special.
- Choose Paragraph Character from the list.
We are essentially replacing two paragraph characters with one paragraph character.
- Click Replace All.
Find and Replace is an extremely flexible tool, and the possibilities are endless. Play around, try things out, and save yourself a ton of time.
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Deborah Ashby
Deborah Ashby is a TAP Accredited IT Trainer, specializing in the design, delivery, and facilitation of Microsoft courses both online and in the classroom.She has over 11 years of IT Training Experience and 24 years in the IT Industry. To date, she's trained over 10,000 people in the UK and overseas at companies such as HMRC, the Metropolitan Police, Parliament, SKY, Microsoft, Kew Gardens, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP.She's a qualified MOS Master for 2010, 2013, and 2016 editions of Microsoft Office and is COLF and TAP Accredited and a member of The British Learning Institute.
