How to Use Find and Replace Feature in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word's 'Find and Replace' feature is an excellent time saver. Whether you are editing for spelling, punctuation or you decide to change a character's name in your manuscript, find and replace can save you a few valuable moments or hours of hair pulling, depending on the size of your document. It lets you have as much or as little control as necessary over which items are replaced. For example, you may manually replace using the "Replace" button for all but one of the occurrences of a term.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Word

Instructions

1. Click "Replace" in the Editing group of the Home tab in Microsoft Word 2007 or later. Click the "Replace" tab in the window that appears.

2. Enter the word or words you want to find in the "Find what" field. Enter the replacement term in the "Replace with" field.

3. Click "Find Next" to find the first occurrence of the search tem. Click "Replace" to replace it and find the next occurrence or click "Replace All" to replace all occurrences with the replacement term.

Tips & Warnings

• You can replace other things that just words with the find and replace feature such as replacing certain special characters or even spacings.

• Be careful when replacing words such as "your" and "you're." Words such as these should only be replaced one at a time versus using the mighty 'replace all' button.

References

• Microsoft Office Help: Find and Replace Text