Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 23, 2019)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Optional hyphens are used within a document to indicate a place where a word can be hyphenated, if necessary. If it is not necessary, then the word is not hyphenated at the point of the optional hyphen. These special characters are manually created by pressing Ctrl+- (Ctrl and the hyphen key). They are also inserted by using the Hyphenation tool within Word.
At some point you may want to search for optional hyphens within your document. For instance, you may want to delete them or replace them with some other character, such as a real hyphen. To search for optional hyphens, follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (854) 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 Optional Hyphens.
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2019-11-01 01:25:46
Stock
You are the man! Spent 30 minutes in google trying to solve this. Searching for words with an optional hyphen does not work in Word 2016. Replace "^-" with nothing deleted them all. Many thanks!
2014-12-18 12:16:19
Stefanos Tefos
Thank you so much for the very useful tip!
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