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Setting Fraction Bar Overhang Spacing in the Equation Editor

Printing On Both Sides of the Paper

Turning Off AutoComplete for Dates

Ordering Search and Replace

Understanding Auto Line Spacing

Adding Comments to Your Document

Conditional Calculations in Word

 

Finding an Unknown Character

Summary: Most of the text in a Word document is readily identifiable because you create it using well-known keystrokes: A, B, C, etc. Some characters are much harder to figure out, however, as they have no keyboard equivalent. If you need to search for or replace these characters, your first task is to figure out what they are. This tip provides an easy way to make that determination so that you can do the desired search or replace operation. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

Word documents can contain just about any character you can think of--and many you can't. If you inherit documents from other people, or cut and paste information from other sources, it is possible to end up with characters in Word that you don't know how to identify. If you can't identify them, then it makes it very hard to search and replace them. Sometimes Word will allow you to copy the character and paste it into the Find box when searching, but you can only do this with a limited number of characters.

The answer to this conundrum is to identify, specifically, the character in question. Then you can use the special features of the Find box to locate it. The first step is to create this macro:

Public Sub GetCharASCII()
    MsgBox "CharCode is: " & Asc(Selection)
End Sub

Next, select the single character that you have a question about and run the macro. You will see a dialog box that tells you the ASCII value of the character. For instance, let's say that the character value returned is 148. You would then use the following in the Find box:

^148

Word will now find all instances of the character in question, and you can replace it as desired.

If you still have a stubborn character that this won't work for--for instance, some Unicode characters--then a different approach is required. If you fit into this category, refer to the following article at the Word MVP site:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/FindReplaceSymbols.htm

Tip #1613 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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