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: Pay Attention to Case when Searching for ASCII Codes.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 1, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
You may already know that you can search for most anything when you are using Word's searching tool. One of the things for which you can search is any character's ASCII code. What you may not know is that searching for an ASCII code is not case sensitive.
What does this mean? When you search for an ASCII character such as ^0065 (the capital letter A), you should not expect Word to only return the letter A; it also matches with the lowercase letter a, which is an ASCII code of ^0097. This anomaly only happens when searching for alphabetic characters.
To get around the problem, make sure you utilize the Match Case check box, the same as you would if you were looking for letters instead of ASCII codes. In other words, if you only want ^0065 to match with an uppercase A, then you should make sure that Match Case is selected before doing your search.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1517) 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: Pay Attention to Case when Searching for ASCII Codes.
The First and Last Word on Word! Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate Word 2013. Spend more time working and less time trying to figure it all out! Check out Word 2013 For Dummies today!
White space permeates our documents, and sometimes you'll need to search for that white space. Word makes it easy to ...
Discover MoreNeed to get down to the "character level" when searching for information in a document. Word allows you to search for any ...
Discover MoreWord allows you to search not for special characters that normally do not print such as paragraph marks and line breaks.
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)
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.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
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:
Comments