Normal

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Normal' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

A Fast Find-Next
Want a quick, easy way to "search again" for the next occurrence of what you need? Use the technique in this tip and you'll be finding what you need faster than ever.

Counting Values in Table Cells
In Excel it is easy to count how many times a certain character occurs in a column of cells. In Word, it is a bit trickier. It could be done with a macro, but there is an even easier way, as described in this tip.

Finding the Previous Occurrence
Using Word's Object Browser, it is very easy to move among different instances of what you want to search in your document. This tip explains how this tool can be used effectively to enhance your searching efforts.

Initiating a New Search
If you've done a lot of searching, you know that it is possible for the current search to be messed up by whatever you previously searched for. This tip provides a few guidelines on how you can minimize the impact of those previous searches.

Quicker Multiple Replace Operations
Ever wonder how to get rid of a lot of the same character in a document? This tip covers a technique I learned that is super-helpful when it comes to removing lots of tab characters, but it can be applied to any repeating character you want to get rid of.

Replacing Long Blocks of Text
Word has a length limit on what you can find and replace. There is a way around the limit, however.

Replacing with Plain Text
When you use Find and Replace, the formatting of what you are replacing has an effect on what it is being replaced with. This can create some undesired results, but there are ways around the problem, as described in this tip.

Smart Quotes are Incorrectly Replaced
Word uses two types of quotes in a document—regular quotes and smart quotes. There are a couple of ways you can switch between the two types of quotes, but you may be surprised if switching to smart quotes produces less than perfect results. This tip explains why the incorrect results may occur and what you can do to fix them.

Specifying a Number of Matches
When using pattern matching (wild cards) in searching, Word allows you to specify how many of a particular character should occur in order for a match to be made. This tip describes the parameter, surrounded by curly braces, and gives examples of how it can be effectively used.

Updating to Smart Quotes
As you type a document, Word automatically converts your quote marks and apostrophes to "curly" versions that look more professional. When working with a document from a different source that doesn't include these smart quotes, you may want to convert them all so they look the same. This is easy to do simply by using Word's Find and Replace function. This tip explains how.

Using Search Text in the Replacement
When you use the Find and Replace tool in Word, you may want to include what you searched for in the replacement text. That's easy to do; just apply the technique described in this tip.

When Replace Doesn't Work
Find and Replace is a great tool, but what are you to do if your find or replace doesn't work as you expect? This tip provides a few pointers that will help you track down the cause of whatever problems you are facing.

 

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