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...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Copying, Moving, and Deleting Comments

Comments are often added to documents to aid in their development. You can use regular editing techniques to copy, move, ...

Discover More

Going to the Corners of a Selected Range

When you select a range of cells (particularly if it is a large range of cells), you may not be quite sure if you've ...

Discover More

Aligning Borders with the Page Margins

Add a border to a paragraph and you may find that it extends to the left and right of the regular text margins. To pull ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

More WordTips (menu)

Quickly Changing Tab Alignment

Need to change the alignment of some tabs in a multitude of paragraphs? How you approach the problem depends on whether ...

Discover More

Searching for Special Hyphens

Word allows you to use a couple of different types of hyphens in your document, each with a different purpose. If you ...

Discover More

Searching for White Space

White space permeates our documents, and sometimes you'll need to search for that white space. Word makes it easy to ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is nine more than 1?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.