How to use Wildcards to do Advanced Find and Replace in Microsoft Word

Wildcards or Wild Characters are symbols that represent one or more letter, used to extend your word search beyond just the word itself.

You can use Wildcards to search for words that start with and end with a particular letter or all that start with a certain series of letters such as ‘Doc*’. They can also be used to search for a range of words, there really is a wildcard to help you in any search, for a full breakdown of the most commonly used wildcards and how to use them, keep reading.

Commonly Used Wildcards

% Percent as a Wildcard

The percent symbol is used to match any character.

* Asterisk as a Wildcard

The Asterisk symbol is used to match any one or more character. For example, “care*” will match with anything beginning with ‘the’ in your document, such as ‘careful’, ‘career’, ‘caregiving’ will all match.

? Question Mark as a Wildcard

The Question mark symbol will match any single character. For example ‘ca?e” will match with all of the above words, plus ‘cake’ and ‘cape’.

In some versions of Microsoft Windows and macOS, you can use multiple question marks to symbol more than one missing letter. For example ‘c??e’, this search would pull all of the above words, plus words such as ‘core’ and ‘cube’ and ‘cue’ even though it is not four letters.

[ ] Open/close brackets as a Wildcard

The Unix shells are used to match a range of words or letters. For example, [a-z] will match with any letters from a – z, leaving any numbers out of the match.

Using Wildcards to Find and Replace in Microsoft Word

1. Open Word
2. Select View
3. Click Navigation Pane

4. Within the Navigation Pane, click the magnifying glass

5. Click Settings
6. Select Advanced Settings

7. Tick the Use wildcards box

8. Choose the wildcard character
9. Type additional text in the Find box
10. Type replacement word in the Replace box
11. Press Replace All

You have now successfully used wildcards in an advanced find and replace.

Searching for a better way to work together in Microsoft Word Documents?

When working with a number of people in the same Word document you can quickly find yourself siphoning through old versions to compute who made what changes where and when.

Unless you each have a dedicated ‘edit’ day or time slot, you may also end up accidentally working on the same Word document, at the same time. Leaving you with two versions of the same file and the torturous task of merging them together without wasting 2 hours of precious billable hours.

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This makes it easy to see which document is the most recent file and when it was last edited.

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