In enhancement to browsing as well as changing message, Word lets you look for unique personalities– tabs, indents, paragraph marks, and so forth– and afterwards change them with other special characters. This can be handy for fast and also simple adjustments which would generally take you a bit more time to do by hand.

When Is Searching and also Replacing Special Characters Useful?

To comprehend when looking and replacing special personalities might work, let’s look at some instances.

There are a lot of special characters to detail all of them, however allow’s take a look at a couple of basic instances of just how browsing as well as changing those characters functions.

Instance One: Replace Text with a Special Character

Let’s state your document looks something similar to this:

Note: If you do not see the unique personalities in your file, you can transform them on by clicking the Show/Hide switch on the Ribbon. Its symbol resembles the paragraph symbol.

You require to replace every event of words “Section” with an area icon. Switch to the “Home” tab on Word’s Ribbon and then click “Replace.” Conversely, you can press Ctrl+H.

Type words “Section” into the “Find What” box and after that click the “More >>> >”switch to broaden the Find and also Replace choices.

Click in the “Replace With” box to put your insertion point there and then click the “Special” button.

Click “Section Character” from the dropdown listing.

Notification that the “Replace With” box now includes the text “^%”– this is Word’s code for that area icon. Click the “Replace All” button. In this instance, 16 replacements were made. Click the “OK” switch and after that close the Find and Replace home window.

All incidents of the word “Section” have actually now been replaced with the section character.

Instance Two: Replace a Regular Hyphen with a Non-Breaking Hyphen

For this next instance, notice there are plenty of hyphenated words in our example paragraph, consisting of three occurrences where the hyphenated words are divided on different lines. Let’s change all the normal hyphens with non-breaking hyphens so that doesn’t take place.

On the “Home” tab, click “Replace” or simply press Ctrl+H.

In the “Find What” box, remove any kind of existing text or characters and afterwards type a solitary hyphen character. Click the “More >>> >”switch if required to expand the Find as well as Replace choices.

Click in the “Replace With” box to place your insertion point there. Remove any kind of existing message or characters and afterwards click the “Special” switch.

Click “Nonbreaking Hyphen” from the dropdown list.

Notification that Word’s code for the nonbreaking hyphen–“^ ~”– has actually currently been added to the “Replace With” box. Click the “Replace All” switch. In this example, 11 replacements were made. Click the “OKAY” button and afterwards close the Find and also Replace window.

Word has replaced all hyphens with nonbreaking hyphens. Notice the hyphenated words on the appropriate margin are no longer separated.

Example Three: Replacing Two Paragraph Marks with One Paragraph Mark

In this instance, we intend to change any type of dual paragraph marks with a single paragraph mark, getting rid of the additional spacing in between paragraphs.

On the “Home” tab, click the “Replace” switch. Conversely, you can push Ctrl+H.

Click in the “Find What” box and after that delete any kind of existing message or characters. Click the “More>>> >”switch to open the extra alternatives, click the “Special” button, and then click the “Paragraph Mark” choice from the dropdown checklist.

Notification that Word’s code for a paragraph mark (“^ v”) has been inserted right into the “Find What” box. Click the “Special” switch once again and then click “Paragraph Mark” again from the dropdown list to position a 2nd paragraph mark there. (Note that you might additionally just kind “^ v ^ v” right into the box on your own if you’re currently familiar with the codes.)

There are currently two paragraph marks in the Find what box. Click in the “Replace With” box, remove any kind of existing message or characters, and after that click the “Special” switch. On the dropdown food selection, pick “Paragraph Mark.”

For the final action, click the “Replace All” switch. In this instance, Word made eight substitutes. Click the “OKAY” button and after that shut the Find as well as Replace window.

All incidents of two paragraph marks have been changed with one paragraph mark.

As you can see, using Find and Replace can save you great deals of time when replacing unique personalities in your files. And we’ve simply scraped the surface here. There are a lot more special personalities waiting on that food selection for you to check out.