Open Find and Replace with Ctrl+H

The fastest way to find and replace text in Word is to press Ctrl+H on your keyboard. This opens the Find and Replace dialog box — a single window where you type what you want to find and what you want to replace it with. The dialog stays open until you close it, so you can make multiple replacements without reopening it each time.

If you prefer using the menu instead, click the Home tab at the top of Word, then look for the Editing group on the right side of the ribbon. Click the dropdown arrow next to the magnifying glass icon and select Replace. This opens the same dialog as Ctrl+H.

Key Takeaways

  • Press Ctrl+H to open Find and Replace, or use Home > Editing > Replace from the menu.
  • Type the text you want to find in the top field and the replacement text in the bottom field, then click Replace All to change every instance at once.
  • Use Replace instead of Replace All if you want to check each match before changing it, which catches mistakes where the search term appears in unexpected places.
  • Match Case makes the search case-sensitive, so "Word" will not match "word" — useful when you need to preserve capitalization.
  • You can search for paragraph breaks, tabs, and special characters by clicking More Options and using codes like ^p for paragraph breaks.

Type what you want to find and what to replace it with

In the Find and Replace dialog, the top field is labeled Find What. Type the exact text you want to search for — for example, if you want to replace every instance of "colour" with "color", type "colour" in this field.

The bottom field is labeled Replace With. Type what you want to replace it with — in this example, "color". Leave this field empty if you want to delete the found text instead of replacing it with something else.

Word searches for your text exactly as you type it, including spaces and punctuation. If you type "the " (with a space after it), Word will not match "the" at the end of a sentence without a space after it.

Replace one at a time or all at once

Once you have entered your search term and replacement, you have two choices. Click Replace All to change every instance of the text in your document at once. Word will tell you how many replacements it made. This is the fastest option when you are confident the search term only appears where you want it replaced.

Click Replace (without the "All") to change one instance at a time. Word highlights the first match in your document. You can then click Replace to change that one and move to the next match, or click Find Next to skip it without replacing. This approach is safer when the search term might appear in places you do not want to change — for example, if you search for "read" and your document contains both "read the book" and "I have read it", you can choose which ones to replace.

Make the search case-sensitive if you need to

By default, Word treats uppercase and lowercase letters the same way. If you search for "word", it will find "Word", "WORD", and "word" all together. Sometimes this is what you want, but sometimes it is not.

To make the search case-sensitive, click More Options at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog to expand it. Check the box next to Match Case. Now "Word" will only match "Word" with a capital W, not "word" or "WORD". This is useful when you need to preserve capitalization — for example, replacing "john smith" with "John Smith" without accidentally changing "JOHN SMITH" to "John Smith".

Search for special characters like paragraph breaks and tabs

Sometimes you need to find and replace things that are not regular text — like paragraph breaks, tabs, or line breaks. Word uses special codes for these. Click More Options to expand the dialog, then click Special to see a list of codes you can use.

The most common ones are ^p for a paragraph break (the invisible marker at the end of each paragraph when you press Enter) and ^t for a tab. For example, if your document has extra paragraph breaks between every line and you want to remove them, search for "^p^p" (two paragraph breaks in a row) and replace with "^p" (one paragraph break). This removes every double space between paragraphs at once.

You can also use these codes in the Replace With field. If you want to add a paragraph break between two words, search for the word "and" and replace it with "and^p" to put a paragraph break after every instance of "and".

Close the dialog and undo if something went wrong

Once you are done replacing text, close the Find and Replace dialog by clicking the X button in the top right corner or pressing Escape. Your replacements stay in the document.

If you realize you made a mistake — for example, you replaced the wrong text or replaced too much — press Ctrl+Z when ready to undo the last action. Word will undo all the replacements from your last Replace All command, or just the last single replacement if you were using Replace one at a time. You can undo multiple times if you need to go back further.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I search for part of a word?

Yes. If you search for "ing", Word will find it inside "running", "walking", and "thing" as well as the word "ing" by itself. If you only want to find "ing" as a complete word, click More Options and check Match whole words only. Now "ing" will not match inside other words.

What if I want to keep some of the text I found?

You can use parentheses to capture part of the search term and reuse it in the replacement. Click More Options and check Use regular expressions. Then search for something like "(John) Smith" and replace with "\1 S." to change "John Smith" to "John S." — the \1 means "the first thing in parentheses". This is advanced and takes practice, but it is powerful for complex replacements.

Does Find and Replace work in headers and footers?

Yes, but only if you are currently editing the header or footer. Double-click in the header or footer area to start editing it, then open Find and Replace as usual. If you want to search the whole document including headers and footers at once, make sure you are editing the main document body, not inside a header or footer.

Can I search across multiple documents at once?

Not with the standard Find and Replace dialog. You have to open each document and run Find and Replace separately. If you have many documents to change the same way, consider using Word's mail merge or macro features, though those require more setup.