How to Replace Text in Word 2007

You can use the Find and Replace feature to replace text in your Word 2007 document. You can even replace text with nothing, which is useful for stripping out text that you don’t want.

1

Summon the Find and Replace dialog box.

When the Replace command button isn't visible in the Editing group, click the Editing button, and then choose the Replace command button from the pop-up group of command buttons that appears.

2

In the Find What box, type the text you want to find.

So, if you're finding Lance and replacing him with Paula, type Lance. Press the Tab key when you’re done typing.

3

In the Replace With box, type the text you want to use to replace the original text.

If you don’t type anything in the Replace With box, Word replaces your text with nothing!

4

Click the Find Next button.

Word scours your document for the text you typed in the Find What dialog box. When that text is found, you move on to the next step; otherwise, the Replace command fails because there’s nothing to replace.

5

Click the Replace button.

Word replaces the found text, highlighted on-screen, with the text typed in the Replace With box.

6

Keep replacing.

After you click the Replace button, Word immediately searches for the next instance of the text. Keep clicking Replace until the entire document has been searched.

7

Click the Close button.

You're done! If you don’t like the results of the Replace operation, you can use the Undo command to restore your document to its previous condition.

Comments (4)

  1. Posted by tramadol an 627
    8cS5gp Great site. Good info.
  2. Posted by Umesh
    Hi I wnanted to convert some text to like this sectiontitleparaparasectiontitleparaparasectiontitle when i find first content using find : \\(*)\ replace: \2^p it will find when i replace the text replaced first finded content but next section is going to skiped because cursor is in next section positon i wanted to take back the cursor posiotion if i give go to home and find again it will find first section please any one suggest me. Advance Thanks
  3. Posted by Byard
    I want to find and replace but also leave the original. How do I do this? For example: I want to find numbers (digits) and modify them slightly. So I find: 1 and change it to 1) and find 2 and change it to 2) etc. I have about 8000 numbers, so I need a way to do this automatically and not type every number. Is there a wildcard charcter to replace and keep the original thing I searched for and simply add text?
  4. Posted by Online Dummies Editor
    @Byard: There is more than one way to solve your problem, depending on how high your numbers go and how often numbers appear in the text. Without using the Use Wildcards option, you can use ^& in the Replace With box to refer to what is in the Find What box. So, for instance, you could put ^# in the Find What box (will find any digit) and ^&) in the Replace Box.

    This'll put parentheses after ALL of your numbers, though. In addition, a 12 will become 1)2). This probably isn't what you want.
    An alternative: If all the numbers you want to change appear at the beginning of a paragraph (like a numbered list): Find ^p^# , replace with ^&) (This'll work only if you use single-digit numbers. You might want to find ^p^#^# and Replace All to grab all the two-digit numbers, then use the original and replace them one by one.)
    Wildcard searches are more powerful, but more complicated, and it really depends on finding the one thing that all the numbers you want to change have in common that none of the other numbers do.

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