Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Searching for ASCII and ANSI Characters.

Searching for ASCII and ANSI Characters

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 8, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Word allows you to search for any ASCII or ANSI character. To search for ASCII characters, follow these steps:

Choose Find from the Edit menu, or press Ctrl+F.
In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. To search for an ASCII character, enter a carat (^) followed by the three numbers representing the ASCII value of the character. For instance, to search for an uppercase A, you could enter ^065.
Set other searching parameters, as desired.
Click on Find Next.

You can search for an ANSI character by following these steps:

Choose Find from the Edit menu, or press Ctrl+F.
In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. To search for an ANSI character, enter a carat (^) followed by a zero and the three numbers representing the ANSI value of the character.
Set other searching parameters, as desired.
Click on Find Next.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (19) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Searching for ASCII and ANSI Characters.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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