Word's Find and Replace tool allows you to search for more than just text; you can also search for character, paragraph, and style formatting. Learn how to find specific formatting in your document with the following articles.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

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

   Adding Tags to Text
The Find and Replace capabilities of Word can be used to add HTML tags to your document text. This is easier to do than it may sound, using the technique outlined in this tip.

   Automatically Formatting Text within Quotes
Some people use quote marks around text to make it stand out. At some point you may want to treat the quoted text differently, perhaps by making it bold. This tip presents two ways you can make the conversion.

   Finding Formatted Bulleted Paragraphs
Want to find the bulleted paragraphs within a large document? Word doesn't have a built-in way to search for this formatting. There is, however, a way to get the information you need. This tip explains how to go about it.

   Protecting Hidden Text
Formatting some of your text as hidden can be a great help when you need to keep some things from being viewed or printed. The hidden text can be easily unhidden by anyone, however. Here's how to get rid of it so that it can't be uncovered.

   Replacing Hidden Text
Word allows you to format text so it can be easily hidden from view and from printing. If you want to convert the hidden text to regular text, there's an easy way to do it using the regular Find and Replace capabilities of Word.

   Searching for Borders
Want to find all the paragraphs in your document that have borders applied to them? The regular Find and Replace tool won't work for this purpose. Here are a couple of ways you can find what you need, however.

   Searching for Character Formatting
Need to look for a piece of text possessing a particular formatting attribute? Here's the skinny on how this is accomplished.

   Searching for Formatting
When searching for text, Word can pay attention to more than just the characters in the text. It can also pay attention to how that text is formatted. Here's how to search for character, paragraph, and style formatting.

   Searching for Periods Not Followed by a Space
Most periods should be followed by at least one space. What if you think there may be some errors in how your post-period spacing appears? You can use the search techniques presented in this tip to locate the problem areas.

   Searching for Text Not Using a Certain Style
Word is very flexible in what it allows you to search for. One thing it can't do, however, is allow you to search for text that is not formatted using a certain style. Here are some things you can do to get around this seeming shortcoming.

   Searching for Text With a Certain Format
The Find and Replace tool in Word is very powerful. You can use it to search not only for text but for the formatting that may be applied to text. This tip explains how you can search for just the formatting you need.

   Selective Formatting using Find and Replace
The Find and Replace tool in Word allows you to check for formatting in what you search for and use formatting in your replacement text. What it doesn't do is allow you to be selective on which characters of your replacement text have formatting applied. There is a way around this using two passes through Find and Replace, as described in this tip.