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: Replacing an X with a Check Mark.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 29, 2019)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Cindi wants to use Find and Replace to replace a capital X with a check mark character. Specifically she wants to use the check mark character available in the Wingdings font. She's a bit unclear on how to do this type of replacing, however.
Actually, getting the results you want are relatively easy. There are several ways you can go about the task, but they all follow these general steps:
Figure 1. The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
This is fairly straightforward and should already be familiar to you. It is, after all, the basic method for doing most Find and Replace operations. The trick, however, is in how you do step 9. There are several ways you can specify the check mark character.
One way is to copy the check mark to the Clipboard before you start the steps. Just type the check mark into the document, as desired, and then use Ctrl+C to copy it to the Clipboard. Then, in step 9, you can either press Ctrl+V to paste it into the Replace With box or you can use the ^c characters to tell Word you want to use the contents of the Clipboard as your replacement.
Another way to specify your check mark is to remember that all characters have underlying character codes that are understood by Word. If you can find out the character code for the check mark (it is available in the Symbol dialog box if you use that method of creating the check mark), then you can use the code in the Find and Replace dialog box.
In this case, the character code for the check mark is 252, which must be entered using four characters and a carat mark. Thus, you would enter ^0252 in the Replace With box. When you do the replacement, you'll see the check mark (which corresponds to the character code) appear in your document.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7645) 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: Replacing an X with a Check Mark.
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2014-08-02 12:22:50
Peter Bolton
Not so much a comment on this particular procedure, which I can see is very useful, but more to do with the process of copy and paste. With copy and paste exercises, I find it is so much easier & quicker to use right click and select which I want from the drop down menu. Right click is so useful on so many occasions, it is worth trying whatever you are doing to see what short cuts that can be used.
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