Many features of the Word editor are often not familiar to even experienced users. Among the valuable and very convenient functions of this program is the ability to search through a document. This function will not only significantly speed up text processing, but also make it better.
Calling up the search box
There are two easiest ways to enable search in Word.
Firstly, you can click the "Find" button in the main menu. This button (command) is located on the “Home” tab in the group on the right. This is the easiest way to start, but not the most convenient way to work.
It is better to remember the key combination by which the search function is turned on. This is also useful because this key combination brings up a search box in almost all applications that require this feature.
The search and replace window is activated using the Ctrl and F keys. After pressing these keys at the same time, a window with the Find, Replace and Go tabs appears on the screen. The “Find” function allows you to quickly find the desired combination of characters in the text of the document, “Replace” - change the found combination of characters, and using the “Go” option you can quickly navigate through the elements of the document.
Search for a word in a document
A word search in Word is actually a search for the desired combination of characters. So, if you need to find all forms of the word “girl”, it’s advisable not to write the whole word in the search bar, but to write only its constant, unchanging part of “girls” - then, by pressing the “Find Next” key, you can navigate through all cases of using this word in the document.
If the forms of the word are significantly different from each other, you may have to search repeatedly. For example, this refers to the word “guy”, because due to alternation in the root it does not contain the letter “e” in word forms of indirect cases between the letters “p” and “n”. Moreover, the reduction of the word to the first three letters “pairs” will include in the search results a ton of words that are not related to the search term. Therefore, it is advisable to first find all cases of the use of the word “guy” in the nominative case of the singular, and then - all other cases, writing in the search bar the combination “guy” (it is contained in all indirect cases of the singular and in all cases of the plural - “guy” "," guys "," guys ", etc.).
Spelling control
You can search the text in Word for additional control over typical spelling errors that the author knows or that are already found in the text during verification. For example, for many, the correct spelling “so” and “so that” has not been brought to automaticity. Knowing this potential error, you can, without rereading the text and focusing only on this rule, find and verify the correctness of the spelling of problem cases by first entering “so that” and then “so that” in the search bar.
Quickly format single characters or words
When the search box is called up, not only the search function becomes available, but also many related ones. One of them is the allocation of found characters with their subsequent formatting. Let's say in all the text you need to change the font of the brackets. In many font sets, parentheses have an unsuccessful, unaesthetic design: the brackets can be almost square, as, for example, in the Cambria font, or almost oblique, or vary significantly in size from other characters and spoil the impression of the entire text. Their formatting can be changed in a few clicks.
It is enough to enter the sign of the opening bracket in the search bar, then click on the "Find" button, select the "Main document" option, and the search in the Word will highlight all the signs of the opening brackets. Now they can be formatted. For example, you can change the font to Times New Roman.
Then the same manipulations must be repeated for all closing brackets.
This simultaneous formatting is convenient to use when you need to highlight a specific word in bold or italics. True, you must always remember that the Word will search and highlight exactly the combination of characters.
Quick change of characters
In addition to searching and highlighting with subsequent formatting, it is possible to search in Word with a replacement. If you click on the second tab in the search window - "Replace", then you can see two lines. In one you need to enter the combination of characters that you need to find, and in the second - the one you need to change what you found. At the same time, both the search and the replacement, in addition to the combination of characters, can also take into account their formatting (“More” - “Format” ...).
Say, in bulk text, before printing or editing, you need to change all hyphens on the dash so as not to make these replacements when editing manually. To do this , type a space, a hyphen, a space in the search string, and a space, dash, space in the replacement string. If you press the Replace All button, then all hyphens surrounded by spaces will be replaced by dashes surrounded by spaces.
Hyphens in place of dashes often contain texts copied from the browser. On many Internet pages, dashes are replaced by not just hyphens, but double hyphens. Manually adjusting them would be very tedious. Using the search function with simultaneous replacement, this problem is solved in several actions: a space, a double hyphen and one more space are entered in the search string, and a space, dash and one more space in the replacement string. Clicking the Replace All button eliminates all double hyphens in the text, changing them to dashes.
It is difficult to overestimate the search in Word with highlighting and with phased or simultaneous replacement when it is necessary to work with texts of large volumes and eliminate repeated errors and shortcomings.