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On a simple level, the Find command in Word 2007 hunts down chunks of text. Yet the Find command is far more powerful than that. You can use the Find command to find text exactly as it's typed, text you cannot type, formatting commands, and just about anything in a document. Yes, it's still the same Find command, but you can make it do more.
To unveil the Find command, press Ctrl+F to display the Find and Replace dialog box. Click the More button. The Find and Replace dialog box gets taller, with a bunch of options and doodads at the bottom.
Finding an exact bit of text
There's a difference between Curt and curt. One is a name, and the other is being rude and abrupt. To use the Find command to find one and not the other, select the Match Case option under Search Options. That way, Curt matches only words that start with an uppercase C and have lowercase urt in them.
Finding a whole word
The Find Whole Words Only option allows you to look for words such as right and set without also finding words like righteous and upset.
Finding text that you know only a small part of (by using wildcards)
 | It's possible to use wildcards to find words that you know only a part of, or a group of words with similar letters. The two basic wildcard characters are ? and *, where ? represents any single letter and * represents a group of letters. Suppose that you type the following line in the Find What box: |
?up
If you select the Use Wildcards option (in the More part of the Find and Replace dialog box), Word searches for any three-letter word that starts with any old letter but must end with "up" — cup, pup, and sup, for example.
The asterisk finds a group of characters, so the following wildcard locates any word starting with w and ending with s — was, wishes, wilderness, and so on:
w*s
Finding text that sounds like something else
The Sounds Like (English) option allows you to search for homonyms, or words that sound the same as the search word. You know: their and there or deer and dear or hear and here. If you try to use it to find everything that rhymes with Doris, however, it doesn't find Boris, chorus, or anything of the like.
Finding variations of a word
To make Word search for every variation of walk (walking, walked, and so on), type walk in the Find What box and select the Find All Word Forms (English) option in the Search Options area.
Searching this way or that
The Find command can be directed to look not only forward through a document, but backward as well. The secret lies in the Search drop-down list in the More part of the Find and Replace dialog box:
- All: When you choose this option, Find searches the entire document, from the insertion pointer's location down to the end of the document, back up to the beginning, and then back to the cursor's location.
- Down: Find searches from the cursor's location to the end of your document, and then it stops.
- Up: Find searches from the cursor's location to the start of your document, backward. Then it stops.
 | You can also use the Browse buttons to repeat the Find command up or down, depending on which Browse button you click. |
Finding stuff you can't type in
There are things you can search for in a document, things that just cannot be typed at the keyboard. These things include tabs, Enter keys (paragraphs), page breaks, graphics, and other, similar non-typable things.
To find a special, unprintable character, click the More button in the Find and Replace dialog box, and then click the Special button. Up pops a list of various things Word can search for but that you would have much difficulty typing.
Finding formatting
The Find command also can scour your document for formatting information. For example, if you want to find only those instances of the word lie in italic type, you can do that.
The formatting options you can search for are revealed to you with a click of the Format button, which appears in the Find and Replace dialog box when the More button is clicked. Clicking the Format button displays a pop-up menu of Word's primary formatting commands. Choosing any item from that list displays a corresponding dialog box from which you can choose the formatting attributes to search for.
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