Searching for Special Hyphens

Summary: Word allows you to use several different types of hyphens in your documents, for various purposes. When searching, you may want to find specific types of hyphens; this tip shows you how. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

Word allows you to search not just for text, but also for special characters that normally do not print. Two such characters are special types of hyphens used by Word. You can search either for optional hyphens (these are typically inserted by the Hyphenation tool) or for non-breaking hyphens. To search for these characters, follow these steps:

Choose Find from the Edit menu or press Ctrl+F. Word displays the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. To search for an optional hyphen, enter ^-; to search for a non-breaking hyphen, enter ^~ (a tilde character). Optionally, you can specify the actual character by clicking on the Special button and selecting the type of hyphen from the list of special characters. (You may need to click on the More button before you can see the Special button.)
Set other searching parameters, as desired.
Click on Find Next.

Tip #1179 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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Searching for Special Hyphens