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About this lesson

Learn to quickly find a word or format and replace it with an alternative.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

The Find/Replace Function.docx
131.7 KB The Find/Replace Function - Solution.docx
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Quick reference

The Find/Replace Function

Quickly find words and replace them with other words or formats.

When to use

Rather than searching visually for certain words in a document, the Find function will highlight the words. Then you have the option to Replace them with other words or formats.

Instructions:

1.Click the Find button on the Home ribbon or press CTRL F

The Navigation Pane appears on the left side of the screen.

2.In the Search box, type the word to find:  MS Word

Notice all instances of that word are highlighted in the document

3.To replace the word, click the drop down arrow by the Search box and choose “Replace”, or type CTRL H

4.Type the Find word and the Replace word; use the buttons on the screen to move through the words individually or all at once with “Replace All”.

5.Click “More>>” to replace with Font styles or colors

6.If you replace too much and want to reverse it, simply click the UNDO button on the ribbon or press CTRL Z.

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  • 00:05 Hello, in this lesson I wanna talk to you about Find Replace.
  • 00:08 Instead of you searching and your eyes swimming through text to find a word,
  • 00:13 how about we just have the computer do it for us, okay?
  • 00:16 So if you'll notice on the home ribbon, way over here on the right
  • 00:19 hand side is a little tiny Magnifying glass, it says Find.
  • 00:23 And when I float my mouse on that, the tooltip that comes up right below says
  • 00:27 Ctrl+F, that's the universal Find function in any program I've ever met.
  • 00:33 Ctrl+F will initialize a Find.
  • 00:35 All right, so let's go ahead and get started to show you what happens.
  • 00:38 So, I'm gonna go ahead and press Ctrl+F.
  • 00:41 On my keyboard, and
  • 00:42 up opens over here on the left, a navigation pane with a matching hourglass.
  • 00:47 Or, I'm sorry, a magnifying glass just like the one on the top righthand side.
  • 00:51 So I want to find the word, the.
  • 00:52 So I will type the word, the, and it automatically searches the entire document
  • 00:58 for that word even if, notice right here.
  • 01:00 I have the word other, that is part of the word other.
  • 01:04 So we don't even highlight that, so that's kinda nice.
  • 01:07 Now I also have these arrows.
  • 01:09 I can actually skip through and
  • 01:11 have it find every instance of the word the for me.
  • 01:14 So I don't even have to scroll through and look.
  • 01:16 It'll zoom on through.
  • 01:17 All's I have to do is use these arrows.
  • 01:20 Kinda nice.
  • 01:21 All right, let's find another one.
  • 01:22 Let's find the phrase MS Word.
  • 01:25 So it's two words, but it's gonna find.
  • 01:28 So if I just had Word, it's not gonna find it.
  • 01:30 It had to be combined, MS Word.
  • 01:32 Again, I've got the results here.
  • 01:34 I could skip through just by clicking this little arrow, and
  • 01:37 it'll skip on through until it goes back up to the talk.
  • 01:40 Now let's take this a step farther.
  • 01:42 Instead of just finding the word, I wanna change the format of the word.
  • 01:45 There's so many of them.
  • 01:47 To do this manually might take a long time.
  • 01:50 So let's click on the Home ribbon on the right hand side to find function.
  • 01:55 I'll hit the drop-down arrow there and let's go to advance find.
  • 01:58 When I click the advance find, it's give this find and replace.
  • 02:03 So I wanna find a word and replace it with the word that differently formatted.
  • 02:07 So, I'm gonna click on the replace in the background and replace with what?
  • 02:11 Well, I still wanna replace it with MS Word.
  • 02:15 But, I wanna get a little more technical, I wanna hit the more button.
  • 02:20 Now when I click the more button, this screen It allows you to choose
  • 02:25 formatting right down here or special characters.
  • 02:28 So I'll go ahead and activate formatting, and of course it's going off my screen,
  • 02:33 of course it is.
  • 02:34 So formatting and I wanna change the font.
  • 02:37 So when I click format font,
  • 02:39 now I can tell it that I want it to be italicized, and I want the font color.
  • 02:43 And we'll go with a bright orange on this one, and
  • 02:46 then I'll go ahead and hit okay at the very bottom of this.
  • 02:49 All right.
  • 02:50 So when I click okay, it's now going to ask me do you want to replace or
  • 02:55 replace all notice right here font italic font color accent two,
  • 03:01 apparently that's an orange.
  • 03:03 So I could them do one at a time I'll just hit them all.
  • 03:06 Replace all.
  • 03:07 And it tells you we make five replacements.
  • 03:09 Do you want to continue searching?
  • 03:11 Search just to make sure.
  • 03:12 Hit OK.
  • 03:13 And when I close this, look at what happens on my screen.
  • 03:17 It end all that work for me.
  • 03:18 Now, maybe not such a big deal since they were only five and there's only one page.
  • 03:22 But, let us just look at long manuscripts.
  • 03:24 You don't have to keep searching through all that, you're going to miss one.
  • 03:28 So that is how you operate define function.
  • 03:31 Ctrl+F, a navigation comes up.
  • 03:33 I do have a drop down here where I can go to Advanced Find, and replace.
  • 03:37 Or you could use a magnifying glass way over here on the right hand side.
  • 03:41 Same feature, find, advance find, go to a different page.
  • 03:45 Whatever way works for you.
  • 03:47 Personally, I like Ctrl+F.
  • 03:50 All right, thank you.

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