The Find and Replace tool lets you search for specific words or phrases and swap them out for different ones across your entire document at once

Word's Find and Replace feature saves you from manually hunting through pages to change the same word over and over. You can replace a single instance, all instances at once, or stop and review each one before you approve the change. The tool also lets you search for formatting — like bold text or a specific font — and replace it with different formatting, which is useful when you need to reformat large sections quickly.

You reach Find and Replace through the same keyboard shortcut on Windows and Mac: Ctrl+H on Windows, or Cmd+H on Mac. A dialog box opens with two text fields: one for what you're searching for and one for what you want to replace it with.

Key Takeaways

  • Open Find and Replace with Ctrl+H (Windows) or Cmd+H (Mac), then type the word you want to find and the word you want to replace it with.
  • Click "Replace All" to change every instance at once, or click "Replace" to review and approve each change one by one.
  • Use "Match Case" if you only want to replace words that match the exact capitalization you typed, such as replacing "John" but not "john".
  • The "Find & Replace" pane stays open so you can search again without reopening the dialog, and you can close it by pressing Escape or clicking the X.

How to replace every instance of a word at once

Type the word you want to find in the "Find what:" field. Then type the replacement word in the "Replace with:" field. Click the "Replace All" button, and Word will change every matching instance in your document and show you how many replacements it made.

This is the fastest route when you're confident the word appears only where you want it replaced. For example, if you're renaming a project from "Project Alpha" to "Project Beta" throughout a 20-page report, "Replace All" handles it in one click. Word will tell you it replaced 47 instances (or however many there are), and you can undo the entire operation with Ctrl+Z if something went wrong.

How to review each replacement before it happens

If you're unsure whether every instance of a word should be replaced, use "Replace" instead of "Replace All". Type your search term and replacement term, then click "Replace". Word highlights the first match in your document and waits for you to decide.

You have three choices at each match: click "Replace" to change just that instance and move to the next one, click "Replace All" to change this one and all remaining matches without asking again, or click the arrow button (or press the down arrow key) to skip this instance and move to the next match. This method takes longer but gives you control over which instances actually change.

Using Match Case to replace only exact capitalizations

By default, Word treats "word", "Word", and "WORD" as the same thing. If you check the "Match Case" box before searching, Word will only find and replace words that match the capitalization you typed exactly.

This matters when you have a word that appears in different contexts. For example, you might want to replace "president" (lowercase) with "director" but leave "President" (capitalized) as is. With "Match Case" checked, searching for "president" will skip over "President" in your document. Without it checked, both would be replaced.

Finding and replacing formatting without changing the text

You can search for text that has specific formatting — like bold, italic, a particular font, or a certain font size — and replace it with different formatting. Click the "Format" button (or "More" if you don't see it) to reveal formatting options below the search fields.

For example, you could find all instances of bold text and change them to italic, or find all text in Times New Roman and change it to Calibri. Click "Format" under the "Find what:" field to set what formatting you're looking for, then click "Format" under the "Replace with:" field to set what formatting you want instead. This is especially useful when you inherit a document with inconsistent formatting and need to standardize it quickly.

What to do if Find and Replace seems to miss something

If you search for a word and Word says it found zero matches, but you can see the word in your document, the most common reason is that the text is inside a text box, header, footer, or comment rather than in the main body. Find and Replace searches the main document by default and may not search these other areas depending on your Word version.

To search headers and footers, double-click the header or footer area to open it for editing, then run Find and Replace again. For text boxes and comments, you may need to search those separately or manually. Another possibility is that the word contains a special character or formatting you can't see — for instance, a line break in the middle of what looks like one word, or a non-breaking space instead of a regular space. Try copying the exact text from your document and pasting it into the "Find what:" field to match it precisely.

Undoing a Find and Replace that changed too much

If you click "Replace All" and realize the replacements weren't what you wanted, press Ctrl+Z immediately to undo the entire operation. Word treats "Replace All" as a single action, so one undo reverses all the changes at once, no matter how many replacements were made.

If you've made other edits since the replacement, you can still undo, but you'll undo those other edits too. For this reason, it's worth using "Replace" (one at a time) instead of "Replace All" when you're not completely sure, even though it takes longer. You can always switch to "Replace All" once you've seen a few matches and confirmed they're correct.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I search for part of a word, like just "cat" within "category"?

Yes, by default Word searches for your term anywhere within a word. If you type "cat" in the Find field, it will match "cat", "category", "concatenate", and "scatter". If you want to find only the standalone word "cat", check the "Match entire word only" box, and Word will skip over "cat" when it's part of a larger word.

What does the "Use wildcards" option do?

Wildcards let you search for patterns instead of exact text. For example, the wildcard "." matches any single character, so searching for "c.t" would find "cat", "cot", and "cut". This is useful for finding variations of a word or text that follows a pattern, but it requires learning wildcard syntax. Most everyday replacements don't need it.

Can I replace text with nothing to delete it?

Yes. Leave the "Replace with:" field empty and click "Replace All". Word will delete every instance of the search term. This is faster than manually selecting and deleting repeated text, but use it carefully — make sure you really want to remove that text from the entire document.

Does Find and Replace work the same way in Word Online as in the desktop version?

Word Online has a simpler Find and Replace tool with fewer options. You can search for text and replace it, but you won't see all the advanced features like formatting search or wildcards. For complex replacements, use the desktop version of Word.