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: Using Find and Replace to Change Text Case.
David wanted to find words with an initial capital letter and change the initial capital letter to lowercase. Using wildcards, he wrote a Find string that correctly found capitalized words. However, David was unable to figure out how to change the initial capital to lowercase. He thought of using a Replace string, but didn't know how to create one that would do that.
There is no way to do this in Word, at least not using Find and Replace by itself. The closest you can achieve is to create a macro that will use Find and Replace to step through all instances of your capitalized words and individually change the case of them.
You can, however, easily change the case of those letters by following these general 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 (7535) 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: Using Find and Replace to Change Text Case.
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2020-02-20 09:19:20
MPerez
Always giving wonderful tips, many thanks!
2019-11-14 10:48:33
Wirkwajie Eugine Wirba
Thanks so much it really helped me to replaced about 212 entries in a document and change to lower case s
2019-08-21 13:53:48
Bob A
Not exactly what I want. I'd like to find and replace all examples of a capital letter followed by a period to the same capital letter without the succeeding period. How can I do that?
2018-11-25 14:27:07
bigbucky
When you click on More there is a Match case checkbox. Check it and then put the capitalized word in the find and the lowercase in replace. it will replace them all in one go.
2018-05-09 03:05:20
Julie
You're great! Thank you! Every time I use it it works perfectly!
2017-03-30 13:15:38
Jacob
Doesn't work. highlights bolded terms, Shift F3 does not change all, only the first term.
2016-08-30 23:13:50
ramon
can you be more specific about it
2015-05-06 10:35:45
VENKATA BHARGAVA RAM
Hi,
Can i get automatically delete repeated word VBA Query? (without adding words to dictionary)
Example:
sales sales
and and
After query:
sales
and
thank you.
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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: 
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