We probably don't need to tell you that you can search and replace in Word to quickly make changes to a document. But what many people don't know is that the Find and Replace function is much more extensive than initially thought. We could fill a book with it, but instead we'll give you two examples of useful Find and Replace tricks.
Search by layout
Suppose you have a document full of text, in which a number of terms need to be replaced. However, the terms should only be replaced in the text that is marked in red, because, for example, the other text has yet to be checked. Then Search and Replace is of no use to you, right?
That's right. You can tell Word that you only want to search in the text that is marked in red. Click the down arrow next to the magnifying glass in the Search field (at the top of Word) and choose Advanced search / tab To replace. Top up now Search the word or words you are looking for and click at the very bottom at To search on layout.
By searching by format you can easily filter within a text.
Here you can select all kinds of formatting elements. We go for color and that is under Font style. Choose the color you want to fillet and click OK. Word will now only search for the indicated words with the formatting style (color in this case) that you have indicated. This also works very handy the other way around, by indicating a color at the field To replaceby means of, you can color a certain word in the entire document in one fell swoop. That saves you a lot of time and work.
wildcards
You can easily search for words and even sentences with Find and Replace, but what if you want to search for a number of sentences with different content in one fell swoop? Suppose you have a text that often contains the sentence: 'We are closed from Monday to Wednesday' and the sentence 'We are closed from Friday to Sunday'. Suppose that condition no longer applies and the company / shop or whatever you are talking about is always open from now on, so you want to remove these sentences. You can look them up one by one or first find one and replace it and then the other, but it can also be done much faster.
Go to the window Advanced search (as previously described) / tab To replace. Press the button More bottom left to expand additional options (unless they are already expanded). Place a checkmark next to Use wildcards. In the field Search do you type We are from*closed. What you do now is tell Word that all sentences that start with we are from and end with Closed fall within the search query. Don't enter anything now To replaceby means of and click Replace everything, then all selected sentences are replaced by nothing and you have effectively removed all those sentences.
Wildcards help you find a very specific piece of text.
