Find and Replace in Word
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Category: Microsoft Word

You've used Find and Replace in Microsoft Word. You probably think it's so easy that you know it inside and out. You type one thing and replace it with something else, what more is there to learn? Well how about when you are trying to find things that might not all be the same? What do you do then? You play with some of the lesser used advanced features of Find & Replace, that's what! Here's just a few, but there's plenty more where these came from.

To see these options if they aren't showing, click the More button in your Find & Replace window.
Use Wildcards - This checkbox allows you to use a question mark or asterisk to indicate that it could be any letter. A question mark finds a single letter. If you wanted to find any two letters in a row, you would use two question marks. Three letters? Three question marks. An asterisk finds a series of letters, regardless of the number of letters involved. Therefore, s?ng would find sang, sing, song, sung. s*ng would find those words plus string, but it could also highlight from the first occurrence of s through the next occurrence of ng (which may not be what you want). Word does not allow you to select "whole word only" as an option when using wildcards (or any special characters for that matter). String could also have been found with s???ng.
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Not looking for any specific text at all, but want to get rid of formatting in your document or change all references of Arial font to Times New Roman in a document that uses multiple fonts? Maybe you have one of those bosses who told you to use green text on every other line in this 2314 page long document, but now insists that the text be red. Perhaps that very technology illiterate boss has decided not to use track changes but instead apply yellow highlighter throughout a 100 page document whenever changes were made (though I'm sure it's only *my* helpful coworkers that do that sort of thing). No problem, you can do that kind of find and replace action too!
Find Formatting - At the bottom of the Find & Replace window, there is a button called Format. You can search for various formatting options, including font, paragraph, tab, borders, frame, and language settings. The windows that appear with each of these options will match the windows that would appear if you chose them from the Format menu. You need to make sure you have clicked in the correct box (Find What or Replace With) before you make selections. Note that as you make the selections, the options you select will show beneath the appropriate fields. Don't type any text in the Find What or Replace With fields - just leave those blank. Word will then just change the formatting without affecting the existing text. After you are done replacing your formatting, be sure to clear those fields so they don't affect future searching by clicking each field and then clicking the "No formatting" button at the bottom of the window.
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Have you ever copied and pasted text from an email, only to have it include all the extra tabs and spaces from the email being forwarded multiple times? You know what I'm talking about. What a pain in the neck getting rid of all that white space, because each line doesn't have exactly the same number of tabs and spaces for you to search for, right? Did you know Word's Find & Replace feature has a function to help you? Oh, yes, it does...
Find White Space - At the bottom of the Find & Replace window, click the Special button. You'll see a lengthy list of options, some of which are unique, depending on if you have clicked in the Find What or Replace With field first. One of the options that shows on the Find What list is White Space. Clicking this adds ^w to your Find What field. This will search for all white space in your text, including multiple spaces and tabs. Be sure to include a single space in your Replace With field.
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I can hear some of you grumbling right now under your breath about how you wish you had known about some of these features before and how you spent hours manually removing that dang yellow highlighter your boss used, etc. It's ok. We've all got to learn new things some time. Let the past go, grasshopper. Focus on the future and how much time and effort you will be saving going forward!
There's actually A LOT more that you can do with Find & Replace in Word. If you ever have to do some kind of a manual replacement action in a document, check to see if something exists in Find & Replace that can make your job easier. I could teach an entire hour long class on all the nuances available in this feature. It's incredibly powerful and I encourage you to explore it further.
Selecting Text in Word
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Category: Microsoft Word

There are lots of shortcuts in Word. You are probably familiar with a few of these, but I doubt if you know them all. Note that many of these tricks actually work in one way or another in other Office programs (I'll explore some of those in a future blog posting).  Do you know any I have missed? Post them in the comments so everyone can see them!

In/On Your Text

  • Single clicking your mouse places your cursor at a specific insertion point.
  • Double clicking your mouse will select a word.
  • Triple clicking your mouse will select a paragraph.

With Cursor in the Left Hand White Margin (changes to right pointing arrow)

  • Single clicking will select the line of text (not sentence, line). Click and drag to select multiple lines of text.
  • Double clicking will select the paragraph of text.
  • Triple clicking will select an entire document (or else press Ctrl-A for All).

Using Shift/Ctrl When Selecting Text

Click once at the beginning of what you want to select. Scroll to the end, where you want to end your highlighting, but don't click yet. Hold down the Shift key and then click at the end of what you want to select. All text between those two clicking points will be selected. This is especially useful when you want to select across multiple pages, since as we all know, when you click and drag past one page, the cursor starts selecting at Mach 1 and you whiz past where you want to go, then when you try to go backwards, you whiz past where you want to backtrack... 

Want to modify your selection (like you included a few letters too many or two few)? Let go of the left mouse button. Press down the shift key, use the arrow keys to extend or reduce the selection. Please note that this works at the end of the selection of the direction you were going. In other words, if you selected left to right, holding down shift and using the arrow keys will extend or reduce the right end of the selection. If you selected right to left, holding down shift and using the arrow keys will extend or reduce the left end of the selection.

Pressing Shift-End will select all text to the right of the cursor to the end of the line.

Pressing Shift-Ctrl-End will select all text from the current location to the end of the document.

Pressing Ctrl and clicking your mouse will select an entire sentence (but only if you don't already have text highlighted for selection).

If you have selected text and you want to select additional text that is not next to the first text area, let go of the left mouse button after selecting the first set of text. Then press down the Ctrl button and click and drag the second set of text. If you want more text, let go of the left mouse button, keep holding down the Ctrl button, and then click and drag again (and so on). NOTE: If you accidentally let go of the Ctrl button and start to click and drag again, you will lose all prior selections and start from scratch.

Ctrl-left/right arrow will move your mouse by word. If you are selecting text and using the shift shortcut just mentioned, holding down the shift key and pressing Ctrl-left/right arrow will extend your selection by a word at a time in the appropriate direction.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Word has an extended mode. If you look down at the very bottom you will see a status bar that includes the letters EXT, greyed out. If you doubleclick that, it will turn black, which turns extended mode on. This makes your arrow keys act like you are holding down your mouse and clicking and dragging. It also allows you, for instance, to just press period and the computer will select all text to the next period. I find this mode a little cumbersome, but there are times when it is useful. Doubleclick the EXT to turn it off again or press ESC. (Bet you didn't realize all those little abbreviations that are greyed out actually do something, did you??? Ohhhh yessss).
 
And this is one of my personal favorites and one that never fails to get at least a couple "dang it, I didn't know I could do that - I've wasted hours deleting stuff manually in that situation" comments... To delete a tabbed column of text (or whatever) in the middle of your page, hold down the Alt key while you select with your mouse, starting at the top left of your selection.

There are even more ways to move through and select text in Word, but this should give you a pretty good start. :)
 
Keeping Text Together In Word
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Category: Microsoft Word

Sometimes you really want to keep text together in Microsoft Word, such as not wanting a phone number to wrap in the middle or not wanting a paragraph to be split. There are a variety of ways to do this, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. These instructions are for Word 2003 but all options are available in Word 2007 as well.

To keep text together with a space (for example, first name and last name), use a hard space by holding down Ctrl-Shift and pressing the Spacebar.

To keep text together with a hyphen (for example, a date or phone number), use a hard hyphen by holding down Ctrl and pressing the - (minus) button. Note, no shift!
 
To keep a paragraph together as one unit, click with your mouse inside the paragraph you want to keep together, then click Format - Paragraph. Click the Line and Page Breaks tab, then check mark the box of Keep Lines Together. This means that when a page starts getting full, Word will move the whole paragraph to the next page (versus moving the last line of the paragraph to the next page).

To keep a paragraph with the next paragraph (like a section heading with the section text), select the first paragraph that you want to keep with the next paragraph (don't forget to select the first paragraph and the blank line if you have one between the heading and the text!) and click Format - Paragraph. Then click the Line and Page Breaks Tab, and check the box for Keep With Next. This ensures that a page break won't occur in the middle of your header and text (or between paragraphs you want to keep together). I use this ALL the time, especially when doing reports or designing forms for instance, where I don't want the question to break from the answer lines across a page.

IMPORTANT HELPFUL HINT: If you are ever having trouble with a Table Cell/Row staying together even when you have the table property of Allow Rows To Split Across Pages checked, it is probably because the text inside the cell has been formatted with Keep Lines Together or Keep With Next (and this is not always on purpose).

SECOND HELFUL HINT: Easiest way to check for this formatting? Click the Paragraph Marker button (looks like a backwards P on your standard toolbar, right next to the zoom drop down box). Your text will have a black box next to the beginning of the paragraph if one of these options is turned on. This view will also show you hard spaces (they look like circles instead of dots) and hard hyphens (they look like longer dashes versus a hyphen).

THIRD HELPFUL HINT: Like this formatting and want to repeat it in other places? Format Painter copies Keep with Next and Keep Lines Together formatting too!

You'll note that Widow/Orphan Control options are checked by default on the Line and Page Breaks Tab. Have you secretly always wondered what the heck that even means? Wonder no more! A widow is when you have the last line of a paragraph all by itself at the top of a page. An orphan is when you have the first line of a paragraph all by itself at the bottom of the page. Word moves a second line to be with that lone line (or moves the full paragraph if needed). I don't imagine anyone really wants to turn that option off. :)

So now, as Al Green would sing... "Let's stay together, Loving you whether, whether Times are good or bad, happy or sad..." Don't we all feel that way about Microsoft Office sometimes???