Tips for Using Find and Replace in Microsoft Word

You can find and replace more than text in Word. The following tips will help you quickly look for and replace formatting issues.

This feature works the same in all modern versions of Microsoft Word: 2010, 2013, and 2016.

One useful Find and Replace tip is how to remove blank paragraphs. This would occur when Enter is pressed twice. In a document with paragraph marks showing, this would look like so:

To quickly find and replace this issue, in the Find and Replace dialog box, find ^p^p and replace it with ^p.

Another Find and Replace tip is replacing formatting. To do so, when in the Find and Replace dialog box, on either the Find or Replace tab, select Formatting.

Select the formatting feature you want to search for and specify options in the dialog box that is displayed.