Special Characters for Find and Replace in Microsoft Word

Extracted from: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214204

NOTE: The caret character (^) in the following tables must be typed. The caret character is created by pressing SHIFT+6 on most keyboards. (Do not confuse this character with the CTRL key.)


''Find what'' Box Only

The following characters can only be used in the Find what box.


Character

String

^1 or ^g

Picture (inline pictures only)

^2, ^f (footnote), or ^e (endnote)

Auto-referenced footnotes or endnotes

^5 or ^a

Annotation/comment mark

^19 or ^d

Opening field brace (Use only when you are viewing field codes.) (Selects whole field, not just opening brace.)

^21 or ^d

Closing field brace (Use only when you are viewing field codes.) (Selects whole field, not just closing brace.)

^?

Any single character

^#

Any digit

^$

Any letter

^u8195

Em space Unicode character value search

^u8194

En space Unicode character value search

^b

Section break

^w

White space (space, nonbreaking space, tab)

^unnnn

Word 2000 Unicode character search, where "n" is a decimal number corresponding to the Unicode character value



''Replace with'' Box Only

The following characters can only be used in the Replace with box.


Character

String

^&

Contents of the "Find what" box

^c

Replace with the Clipboard contents



Both ''Find what'' and ''Replace with'' Boxes

The following characters can be used in both the Find what and Replace with boxes.


Character

String

^9 or ^t

Tab

^11 or ^l

New line

^12

Page or section break (Replaces a section break with a page break)

^13 or ^p

Carriage return/paragraph mark

^14 or ^n

Column break

?

Question mark

^-

Optional hyphen

^~

Nonbreaking hyphen

^^

Caret character

^+

Em dash

^=

En dash

^m

Manual page break

^s

Nonbreaking space

^nnn

Where "n" is an ASCII character number

^0nnn

Where "n" is an ANSI character number



Example: Replacing paragraph breaks in MS Word

PROBLEM: How do I replace paragraph breaks in a text file or MS Word document?

SOLUTION: Using the Find and Replace dialog, use the escape character sequence ^p (shift-6 p) to search for or insert paragraph breaks.