Word 2007[c] The Missing Manual

2.5. Finding and Replacing Text

Scanning every word of your 400-page novel to find the exact spot where you first mentioned Madame DeFarge is drudgery with a capital D. Fortunately, Word performs this task quickly and without whining or demanding overtime pay. What's more, it's just as easy to find and then replace text. Suppose you decide to change the name of the character from Madame DeFarge to Madame de Stael. Simplehere's how to do a Find and Replace:

1. Open the Replace dialog box (Figure 2-20). For example, press Ctrl+H .

   You have many ways to open the Replace dialog box, as explained in the box in Section 2.6. If your hands are on the keyboard, then Ctrl+H is the fastest .

   When the dialog box opens, you see tabs at the top for each of the panels: Find, Replace, and Go To. The controls and options under the Find and Replace tabs are nearly identical. The main difference is that the Replace tab includes two text boxes"Replace with" as well as "Find what."

2. In the "Find what" box, type the text you want to find, and, in the "Replace with" box, type the replacement text .

   For example, type Madame DeFarge in "Find what" and Madame de Stael in "Replace with."

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   Note: The "Find what" is a drop-down box that remembers your past searches. So the next time you go to this box, Madame DeFarge will be there waiting for you.

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3. If you wish, click More to reveal additional Find options .

   When you click More, the box expands, and you see a number of additional controls that can fine-tune your search. For example, if you're searching for "Madame DeFarge" but you don't know how it's capitalized, then make sure the Match Case checkbox is turned off. That way, Word finds every occurrence even if you didn't capitalize it the same way throughout. For an explanation of all the Search options, see the box in Section 2.6.

   The Format button at the bottom of the screen lets you refine your search by including formatting details. For instance, you can limit your search to a specific paragraph style such as Heading 1.

   The Special button at the bottom of the box helps you find characters that aren't easy to enter with your keyboard, like paragraph marks, column breaks, and em dashes. These sound like odd things to search for, but they're enormously helpful when you're reformatting a document. For example, imagine someone sends you a document and they followed the odious practice of using two carriage returns at the end of each paragraph. You can search for all the double paragraph marks and replace them with a single paragraph mark. Problem solved .

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   Tip: A better way to leave extra space between paragraphs is to include it in the paragraph formatting itself. See Section 4.3.3 for details.

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4. Click Find Next to begin your search and replace mission .

   The search begins at the insertion point, so if you want to find all the instances of Madame DeFarge, start at the beginning of your document. A quick Ctrl+Home takes you there. Word finds the text and highlights it in the document. If you need a better look at your text, you can click the top edge of the Replace box and drag it to another position.

5. Examine the text and make sure you want to replace this instance of Madame DeFarge with Madame de Stael. Click Replace, and the text is swapped .

   Word automatically finds the next instance of your search text.

6. If you're certain that you want to replace every instance of Madame DeFarge, click Replace All .

   Word makes all the changes and reports back with the number of replacements it made.