Discussion on:

10 cool ways to get more from Word's Find and Replace feature

You highlighted some tricks I hadn't encountered before.

Does this work in Excel as well as Word?

You always come up with great tips. I would never have even thought about using a clipboard entry as a Replace with. And transposing a list? Good job!

to my arsenal of tips and tricks. Thanks Susan.

I am interested to know if there is a way to find/replace list bullets such as finding a list bullet style and replacing it with another bullet style and finding all lists (irrespective of style) and changing to a single style.

I have tried using format > style > list and list bullet, but to no avail. Is there a way to do it?

thanks

Needing to reposition a column of text where the document originator has used the default tabs and just been happy to hit multiple times to get to the one they want - aaargh! Thankyou Find and Replace for making the job of tidying up so much easier! Thanks Susan - I've learned some new useful ones here too.

I don't know in what version of Word you did this.
I have Word 2010 with Slovenian interface (and Windows 7 also Slovenian). I tried your number 2: Replace multiple spaces with ???. In my Word I needed do write {2;}. In your Word you needed to write comma I needed to write semicolon.

Thanks, Susan. I thought I knew Word inside out but I learned a few new things here. It's always nice to start the day learning something.

To accomplish this, I have been using a space followed by ^w in the Find What box. ^w represents white space which is any combination of soft and hard spaces and tabs. I often get documents sent to me with multiple spaces and/or tabs in an attempt to line up tabular data. This method collapses it all to one tab.

I visit a lot of machines in a day and a good number of those visits involve printing problems. One thing I find about Word is very useful. Open a new document and type =RAND(x) where x is a number. Word will then generate x paragraphs of text - perfect for testing the printer without opening the Printers & Devices dialogue and at the same time proving to your client that it is working correctly.

= RAND(9) generates an A4 page of text.

=rand(x,y) will insert x paragraphps of y length (in sentences). In other words, =rand(10,6) will insert 10 paragraphs of 6 sentences each.

Starting in, I believe Word 2007, =rand.old(x,y) will generate x number of paragraphs and y number of sentences of: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
Note that =rand.old(x,y) has to be at the start of a new paragraph. It will not work within or at the end of a paragraph.
I find this very helpful when teaching a basic Intro to MS Word class and need to show the Find and Replace functions; replacing 'brown' with 'red' for example. It gives the student many simple but identical sentences to practice on.

Starting in, I believe Word 2007, =lorem(x,y) will generate x number of paragraphs and y number of sentences of Lorem Ispum text: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit." for example.
Note that =lorem(x,y) has to be at the start of a new paragraph. It will not work within or at the end of a paragraph.

I especially like the insert and wild card transpose ideas. I use a few of the others all the time but never knew these. I usually had to type partial sentences to replace a word within. Thanks a lot!

Great article, Susan .. thanks! I learned a lot. But I have a question: why did it become the 'standard' to go from two spaces between sentences to just one? I find it *much* easier to read documents when two are used.

Do you know what was behind that decision?

If you use variable width fonts, such as Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, etc. then the software works in the space required to separate a punctuation mark and the next letter. Fixed width fonts (such as those used in typewriters) don't give you that luxury, so it is custom to use a double space (end of sentence) or single space (other punctuation) to differentiate.
Have a read of "The Mac Is Not A Typewriter" (or the PC version) for more formatting tips.

I have strings called "text-a", "text-b", and so on.

I need to duplicate these stings, so that they read:
text-a text-a
text-b text-b

I can use wildcards to find these strings, but I can't use wildcards in the replace field, so that
Search = text-*
Replace = text-* text-*

It seems that the only solution would be a script to search, copy, paste, replace, but I'm hoping for something simpler.

Excellent advise. Do you know if it is possible to replace a string with a cross reference. I tried to replace multiple strings with a copied cross reference and all I got was the text and not the cross reference itself.