Finding All Occurrences in Word, Regardless of Spaces Used

Applies to: Word 2003, Word 2007

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Have you ever had a problem 'finding' all occurrences of a multi-word string because some locations use a space, some a Tab, still others use hard spaces—and some documents use a combination of all of them? An effective, but little-heralded 'find' option might be what you need.

SPECIAL NOTE TO VBA DEVELOPERS: Pay close attention to this one—you'll like it too!

Word 2007

To find all occurrences of a multi-word string-regardless of the method of white space used to separate each word:

1. Home | Editing | Find
2. In 'Find what', enter all desired words, substituting each space with ^w.
   Using ^w ensures all occurrences are found regardless of whether spaces or tabs separate the words.
3. Click the 'Reading Highlight' button and select Highlight All-all occurrences are now highlighted.

Alternatively, you can:

1. Home | Editing | Find
2. In the 'Find what', enter all desired words.
3. Check (enable) the 'Ignore white-space characters' option. This option searches for matching text regardless of the number of spaces between search string letters or words,
   
   AND
4. Check (enable) the 'Ignore punctuation characters' option. This option searches for matching text regardless of punctuation. Keep in mind that this option ignores added punctuation shown in the text, not punctuation included in the Find What box.
5. Click the 'Reading Highlight' button and select Highlight All-all occurrences are now highlighted.

Word 2003

To find all occurrences of a multi-word string-regardless of the method of white space used to separate each word:

1. Edit | Find
2. In 'Find What,' enter all desired words, substituting each space with ^w.
3. Using ^w ensures all occurrences are found regardless of whether spaces or tabs separate the words.
4. If you're using Word XP, check the 'Highlight all items found in' > whole document—all occurrences are now selected.

Applies to: Microsoft Office, Word 2007

Conventions Used: Information regarding the Word 2007 features identified in this article use the following navigation conventions:

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