MS Word and Google Docs are the most used applications in work, school, and home. They are easy to use and share. Both have significant functions that help work routines be more manageable.
They are also designed with simple tools such as ‘Find and Replace.’ This will allow you to find the word or words to edit or any part of the content that needs revision. For example, if you are submitting a report but realized you misspelled a word for dozen times throughout 25 pages, the ‘Find and Replace’ feature can fix the error in a minute.
Find and replace is a valuable tool in MS Word that helps you search your document for a specific word or phrase to edit or needing revision. This tool helps correct misspelled or repeated words to avoid redundancy. Errors are inevitable, but they can be fixed.
To learn more about this feature, read on.
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How to use Find and Replace Word in Windows
1. Open MS Word. Click the “Home” tab found on the left side and click the “Find and Replace” button on the right side. Once open, a box will open where you can see three tabs “Find,” “Replace,” and “Go To.” If you just want to search a text in a document, go to the “Find” tab type the phrase or word you want to find.
2. For replacing words or phrases, click the “Replace” tab. From there, you’ll see a “Find What” box to search for the word, and below it is the “Replace with” box where you can input the word or phrase you want to replace for the word you are searching for. Fill in the tabs with the appropriate words.
In this example, let’s say you want to correct a misspelled word “appreciate” to “appreciate,” so we typed the text into the respective boxes. Next, click the “Find Next” button to allow Word to locate the text in the “Find What” box.
MS Word searches the document and highlights the result in gray without removing the Find and Replace box window on top for you. Click the “Replace” button to replace the currently selected word with the term in the “Replace With” box.
3. To Replace the word, just click the “Replace” button. See the example.
There is also a “Replace All” button if you want to correct or replace a specific word or phrase all at once.
Be careful when using “Replace All” because it will automatically replace all instances, including the words or phrases you do not want to replace. To avoid errors, you can just click the “Find Next” so you can replace the texts you want to correct one by one.
MS Word is a very functional tool for making reports, presentations, and letters, the “Find and Replace” is not the only search feature it has. Of course, there’s more.
Aside from Word, Google Docs is another brilliant tool for office works, school papers, and more. Plus, it’s easy to share on any kind of online platform. Like MS Word, it also supports the “Find and Replace” feature. Here’s how:
How to Find and Replace in Google Docs
1. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + H (in Windows) to open the ‘Find and Replace’ tool in Google Docs. You can also access this feature under the Edit menu.
How to Replace a Word or Phrase
1. Once you click the “Find and Replace” tab, a window will pop up, then type the word or phrase you want to find in the “Find” box and click the “Next” button.
2. To replace a word, fill in the appropriate boxes with the text or phrases you want to correct. There are two options — “Replace” and “Replace All.” Select the button you want. Then it will swap all of the text in the “Find” field with the word in the Replace with box. Now, the error you want to fix in the document is corrected.
- Here’s a tip, if you only want to replace some of the words and not every single one in the document, use the “Prev” and “Next” tabs to find each text of the word and click the “Replace” if needed.
- There are other uses for Find and Replace tool in Google Docs, such as searching for numbers and other characters, even regular expressions to search for a word. For example, find every sentence that ends with “button,” then replace it with “buttons!” or whatever you want to replace. You can also delete words in bulk. Enter the word or words in the “Find” box and put a space or leave the “Replace With” field blank, effectively deleting the texts.
- Also, there is a “Match case” option allowing you to search for words with specific letters in lower or upper case. For instance, you want to correct the word “introduction” to “Introduction.” Just type “Introduction” in the “Find” field and enable the “Match case” button. Lastly, the “Find” tool also helps in searching for specific text. Just access through the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+F” on Windows or “Command F” (macOS). This feature works well to easily find the numbers, characters, and texts within the document.
Takeaway
MS Word and Google Docs are handy apps that are free. They are designed with so many functional features that you can use for your work. Explore the other tools to make it easier for you to navigate and make corrections to your document.