Word has a very powerful search tool with which you can find information on almost any type of condition. There are special wildcards that allow you to search for information by a specific pattern or a given sequence of characters.
Wildcard search is performed in a dialog box Find and Replace (Find and replace). We will introduce you to the basic rules for using this tool so that you learn how to find almost anything in Microsoft Word documents.
Open the Word file and press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Hto open the dialog Find and Replace (Find and replace). Click on More (More) to expand the dialog box and access more options.
Note: If instead of a button More (More) You see the button Less (Less), no need to press anything. The dialog box is already expanded.
Check the box next to the option Use wildcards (Wildcards). Please note that under the field Find what (Find) the corresponding inscription appeared.
Note: When the parameter Use wildcards (Wildcards) is enabled, Word only looks for an exact match of the given text. Options Match case (case sensitive) and Find whole words only (Entire word only) are unavailable and grayed out to show that they are enabled automatically and cannot be disabled while the option is selected Use wildcards (Wildcards).
For example, let’s find all repetitions of the text starting with “t” and ending with “e” with any number of characters between these letters. To do this, enter “t” in the field Find what (Search) and press the button Special (Special) at the bottom of the dialog box. From the menu that appears, select 0 or More Characters (any number of characters) or an asterisk (*).
Note: If you know which special character to use, you can enter it directly in the field Find what (Find). Button Special (Special) gives a hint in case you don’t remember which special characters are available and what their purpose is.
Next (after the asterisk) type “e” and press Find Next (Find below).
The search request will be processed. When the first match is found, click the button Find Next (Find next) to find the next pieces of text that match the query.
To search for text containing any single character, use the question mark (?). For example, if you enter the query “d?g” in the field Find what (Find), all three-letter words starting with “d” and ending with “g” will be found, e.g. “dig”, “dug”, “dog”.
You can also specify specific letters to search by specifying them in square brackets “[]”. For example, if you enter the query “b[aeiou]t” in the field Find what (Find), the words “bat”, “bet”, “bit”, “bot”, and “but” will be searched.
If the parameter Use wildcards (Wildcards) is enabled, and you need to find one of the characters that is used as a wildcard, put a slash (/) in front of this character and start the search. For example, to find a question mark when the option is enabled Use wildcards (Wildcards) you need to enter the query “/?” in field Find what (Find).
In addition, wildcards can be used to replace text. For example, the wildcard “/n” (here n is the number of the word we are replacing) can be used to search for an expression and then replace it with another expression. For example, we entered “(Kaufman) (Lori)” in the field Find what (Find) while in the field Replace with (Replace with) – “/2 /1” (do not forget to put a space between the number 2 and the second character “/”). As a result, Word finds “Kaufman Lori” and replaces it with “Lori Kaufman”.
There are other wildcard characters and codes that you can use to search for different variants of words, multiple words at the same time, or similar groups of words.