Hello, my name is Erin.
I’m a professional copy editor who shares writing tips for the real world on this channel
and on my blog at erinwrightwriting.com.
Today’s tutorial shows you three ways to find and replace special characters in Microsoft Word.
First, we’ll enter special characters directly in to the Find and Replace dialog box.
Then, we’ll select special characters from within the Find and Replace dialog box.
Finally, we’ll use keyboard shortcuts and caret codes.
We’ll focus on the preset special characters available through Word’s Symbol dialog box.
Please note that Word’s Find and Replace tool doesn’t work with some of the
special characters related to formatting.
Those special characters, along with all the special characters that do work with find and replace
are explained in my blog post titled “What Are Special Characters in Microsoft Word?”
For information on inserting special characters, please watch my other video titled
“How to Insert Special Characters in Microsoft Word.”
Both of those resources are linked below.
I’ll be using Word for Office 365, which is currently the same as Word 2019.
The steps are the same for Word 2016, Word 2013, and Word 2010.
Twelve special characters can be inserted directly into the Find and Replace dialog box
by selecting the character.
Those characters are the em dash, en dash, em space, en space, copyright symbol, registered symbol,
trademark, section symbol, paragraph symbol, ellipsis, double opening quote, and
double closing quote.
To insert special characters directly into the Find and Replace dialog box,
select the special character you want to replace in your text.
I’ve selected the copyright symbol for this example.
Then, select the Home tab,
followed by Replace in the Editing group.
Ensure that the special character appears in the Find What text box
in the Find and Replace dialog box.
Note that you can also copy and paste characters directly into this text box.
Some special characters aren’t visible in the text box, so do a test run
before selecting the Replace All button later in this process.
Now, enter the replacement character in the Replace with text box.
I’ll be inserting a trademark by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + t.
We’ll look at more shortcuts in the last section of this tutorial.
You can also copy and paste characters into the Replace With text box
Next, select the Replace, Replace All, or Find Next button.
Replace finds and replaces the next occurrence of the special character
you’re trying to find and replace.
Replace All replaces all occurrences.
And, Find Next finds the next occurrence without making a replacement.
If you find an occurrence you do want to replace, you can then select the Replace button.
A small dialog box or series of small dialog boxes will tell you when the process is finished.
Select the Yes or OK buttons to dismiss those boxes.
Lastly, select the Close button to close the Find and Replace dialog box.
Seven special characters can be inserted into the Find and Replace dialog box
through the Special drop-down menu: the em dash, en dash, nonbreaking hyphen, optional hyphen,
nonbreaking space, section symbol, and paragraph symbol.
To select special characters from within the Find and Replace dialog box,
select the Home tab, followed by Replace in the Editing group.
Then, place your cursor in the Find what text box in the Find and Replace dialog box.
Next, select the More button.
Skip that step is the Less button is already visible.
Now, select the Special button.
And choose the special character you want from the menu.
I am going to choose the em dash.
The special character will appear in the Find What text box as a caret code.
Then, enter the replacement character in the Replace With text box
by choosing another special character from the Special menu or typing a regular character from your keyboard,
or copying and pasting a character from the text.
I’m going to choose an en dash from the menu.
Next, select the Replace, Replace All, or Find Next button.
Again, a small dialog box or series of small dialog boxes will tell you when the process
is finished based on your decision to Replace, Replace All, or Find Next.
Select the Yes or OK buttons to dismiss those boxes.
Finally, select the Close button to close the Find and Replace dialog box.
Fifteen special characters can be inserted into the Find and Replace dialog box using
a keyboard shortcut and/or a caret code.
Instead of reading them for you, here is a table listing all 15 with their keyboard shortcuts
and caret codes.
Several of these special characters have a keyboard shortcut and a caret code.
You can find a downloadable version of this table
on this tutorial’s corresponding blog post, linked below.
To find and replace special characters using keyboard shortcuts or caret codes:
open the Find and Replace dialog box as we did in the previous two sections,
and then type the keyboard shortcuts or caret codes into the Find What and Replace With text boxes.
I’ll type the caret code for the nonbreaking hyphen, which is the caret and tilde, in Find What,
and the keyboard shortcut for the ellipsis, which is Alt plus Control plus a period, in Replace With.
Again, select the Replace, Replace All, or Find Next button,
And then complete process as we did before.
The corresponding blog post for this video along with many other writing tips appear
on erinwrightwriting.com, which is linked below.
Feel free to leave me a comment if there is a specific topic related to Microsoft Word
or Adobe Acrobat that you would like me to address in the future.
And please subscribe to my channel and give this video a thumbs-up if you found it helpful.
Thank you so much for watching!