Ignoring Accented Characters in Searches

Summary: When writing in non-English languages, there can be many variations of accented characters that are used in a word. You might want to search for the word in a way that the accented character is ignored. Word sort of allows you to do this, if you just modify how you do the search. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

Sheila has many files of French names. Since use of accents varies on the names, she would like to be able to search for names without having to include the accents. Sue is wondering if Word can perform "accent insensitive" searches.

The short answer is no, it cannot. The reason is simple: Word searches for characters, and all the accented characters are individual and distinct characters.

The workaround, of course, is to use ^? (any character) or ^$ (any letter) in the place where the various accented characters may appear in your names. If you choose to do wildcard searches, you can get even more specific in the accented characters you want to include or not include in your searching.

Tip #500 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Ignoring Accented Characters in Searches