How to Find and Replace Text in Microsoft Word

When you create a document in Microsoft Word, you may decide to change a certain word or phrase that is repeated throughout the document. Let the computer do the hard work with the Find and Replace feature in Word 97 and 2000 (PC) or 98 (Macintosh).

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Word

1. Place your cursor at the beginning of your document.

2. Go to the Edit menu and select Find. The Find and Replace window opens.

3. Select the Replace tab.

4. Type the word or phrase that you want to find in the "Find what" box.

5. Type the word or phrase you want to replace it with in the "Replace with" box.

6. Select All, Up, or Down in the Search drop-down menu to tell Word how much or which part of the document you want to cover with this search and replace.

7. Select Find Next or Replace if you want to manually replace each word or phrase.

8. Select Replace All if you want Word to automatically search for and replace each instance of the word or phrase without first checking with you.

Tips & Warnings

• Microsoft Word begins its search based on where your cursor is positioned in the document.

• Word also lets you conduct expanded searches for such things as matching case, whole words, wildcards, sounds like, all word forms, character formats, and special punctuation. To access these features, click the More button in the Find and Replace window.

• Be careful when using Replace All. You might change things you don't mean to change. (For example, if you didn't choose the "Find whole words only" option, and changed "Smith" to "Jones," you would find that "Smithers" had changed to "Jonesers" - probably not what you intended.)