Microsoft® Word 2007 Bible

Chapter 11. Find, Replace, and Go To

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Finding text and formatting

• Replacing text and formatting

• Search options

• Special search codes

• Wildcard searches

• Go To

Throughout the years, for many, one of Word's greatest strengths has been its fabulously powerful array of Find and Replace tools. You can accomplish some pretty amazing and sophisticated editing using them, and the Word user who internalizes the skills and knowledge will be able to impress friends and dazzle office mates.

Basic Find (Ctrl+F)

To search for something in Word, press Ctrl+F (or click Find in the Home ribbon), type what you want to search for in Find What, and click Find Next. As shown in Figure 11.1, Find What features a drop-down history of recent searches, remembering the seven most recent. Note that Word does not retain these searches after Word is closed and reopened.

The Find What field can contain up to 255 characters. This makes it possible to search for long and complicated phrases—and not just text. Those 255 characters can contain a variety of operators to search for patterns of text as well.

Find Again

After a successful Find, to find each successive occurrence, you can click Find Next. If the dialog box hides what you're looking for, once you've specified the desired options, you can click Less to hide the rest of the dialog box. Or, if the dialog box is really in the way and you have a large enough screen (or two monitors), you can move the dialog box completely off of the Word window.

Figure 11.1. Word ...