Quick Tip: Using MS Word’s Search & Replace on Formatting
Did you know that in Microsoft Word, it is possible to do a search and replace on the formatting of text? For example, say that you’ve been given a bibliography that has all of the book titles in bold, but proper form is for book titles to be in italics. Using the search and replace function, it’s easy to change all of the bold text to italics in one fell swoop.
- Highlight the section of text to be affected (if not the whole document).
- Bring up the search and replace tool (Ctrl+H).
- Click on the More button to reveal the formatting options.
- Click in the Find What box, so that it has focus (there should be a flashing cursor there).
- Click on the Format button, and select Font…
- Select Bold (or whatever format you’re trying to change from).
- Click in the Replace With box, so that it now has focus.
- Click on the Format button, and again select Font…
- Select Italics (or whatever format you’re trying to change to).
- Click on Replace All
Changing fonts is just the tip of the iceberg. This technique can be used with any sort of formatting (paragraphs, styles, etc.) Also, be sure to click on the Special button to see the options that are available there (Any Digit, Any Letter, etc.) These wildcards and special symbols (along with plain text) can be used in combination with the formatting criteria. For example, it’s possible to change all negative numbers to red this way, by specifying the Find What as a minus sign followed by the Any Digit notation and by specifying the Replace With as nothing but with a font color of red.
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Comments
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Word’s ability and ease here is a big advantage over OpenOffice Writer.
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One of the things keeping me with Word is the able to replace styled text. Are there any other editors that can compete?
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Sir, please tell me how to find the ” cut, copy and pasted word” in the word document. please help me to find this
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How do I change internal spacing after end punctuation?
I need to change from two spaces after punctuation to one?
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How do I change internal spacing between end punctuation?
I need to change from two spaces to one in a lengthy document.
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To replace sentence punctation, search for the period followed by two spaces and replace with a period followed by one space.
FIND
.
REPLACE WITH
.Don’t type “”. Just hit the space bar. It won’t be visible since a space isn’t a typed character, but Word can search for the precise number of spaces entered into the FIND field.
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Is there any way you can use search and replace for text within a text box? I am using Word 2007.
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How do I replace a space with a return? I have a huge list of names that are separated by spaces, but I cannot get them in a single row.
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You can ignore last post, I went ahead and imported it into Excel and did a special paste. Thanks anyways.
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How do I find a “tab character”?
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For next time, the Return key is represented by ^p (the P stands for paragraph-break).
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Tab is ^t. There’s 22 different codes like this. To see them all, click the [Special] button at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box. Whatever item you select, it will automatically add that code to the Find-What or Replace-With field (whichever one last had focus). Next, time, you can type the code in directly, yourself, if you remember it, or just use the Special button again.
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Help!!! Not sure how to do this…
I have a couple hundred cases that need to be composed in a relatively short amount of time. I have 50 page template put together, and all I would have to do, is replace a number of repetitive terms. For example:
“Disclosed herein are new class of (X) and their applications and methods thereof. Methods of (Y) of (Z) activity are also provided”.
Is there some type of form that I can put together where:
X= pyrazoles
Y= inhibition
Z= histamine receptorRemember mad libs? Is there anything like this? I will need to define X, Y, and Z’s individually for each case, but I will be repeating the variables over and over.
Help!!!!
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Dana,
That’s a typical mail merge operation. If you look up “mail merge” in the Word help, you’ll find instructions for setting up your template in one Word document and your list of substitutions in another document (as a table). The template will contain “fields” with names that correspond to the column headers of your table. You’ll then merge the two documents to produce a third document, that being the template text repeated once for every row in the table, with the row data inserted into the corresponding fields.
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That sounds exactly like what I want, but I can’t seem to find the info to get started from the help menu–mail merge turns up 20+ hits, and I can’t tell which one I need to follow. I will take a closer look at it tomorrow morning…
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
Lifehacker on 26 Mar 2007 at 6:32 pm
MS Office Tip: Search and replace Word formatting
Search and replace isn’t just for text content; in Microsoft Word, you can search and replace how text looks, too. For example, you can make all the bolded text italicized instead. The secret knob is the More dropdown in the…
Techzi » Blog Archive » MS Office Tip: Search and replace Word formatting on 26 Mar 2007 at 7:27 pm
[…] Ok, I’m off to make all my negative numbers red now. — Gina Trapani Quick Tip: Using MS Word’s Search & Replace on Formatting [CodeJacked] […]
How to Change Formats Quicker in Excel and Word | Friedbeef’s Tech on 21 Apr 2007 at 6:53 pm
[…] Tech blog Codejacked recently talked about how he could change fonts quickly by clicking on the ‘more button’ in the ‘Find and Replace’ feature of Microsoft Word. He went on to state the following: “Changing fonts is just the tip of the iceberg. This technique can be used with any sort of formatting (paragraphs, styles, etc.) Also, be sure to click on the Special button to see the options that are available there (Any Digit, Any Letter, etc.) These wildcards and special symbols (along with plain text) can be used in combination with the formatting criteria. For example, it’s possible to change all negative numbers to red this way, by specifying the Find What as a minus sign followed by the Any Digit notation and by specifying the Replace With as nothing but with a font color of red” […]