Last week, I asked you to help a user who had to replace several spaces with hyphens to create a hyphenated phrase. The example phrase I used was the best-ever-annual-flower-arranging contest. If the original phrase contains spaces instead of hyphens, how would you quickly correct it, without manually deleting the spaces and inserting hyphens?

Bethernet was the first to suggest using the Replace feature, which is what I would recommend to users wanting to do something similar. First, select the text in question and click Replace in the Editing group on the Home tab. (In Word 2003, Replace is on the Edit menu.) In the Find What control, enter a space. In the Replace With control, enter a hyphen character (-). Then, click Replace All and Word will replace all the spaces with a hyphen character to quickly create a hyphenated phrase.

Rudi-S mentioned using the AutoText feature, which is a great idea if you enter the phrase often. That’s a great idea Rudi-S. Thanks for playing along this week!