Replacing and Formatting at the Same Time

Patrick has a document in which there are "start" and "stop" character sequences that indicate where italics should begin and end. For instance, in the text sequence "$$$This is some text!$!" the "$$$" indicates the start of italics and the "!$!" indicates the end. Patrick wonders if there is a way he can use Find and Replace to (1) remove the character sequences and (2) format the text between those character sequences to italics.

This type of Find and Replace may sound difficult, but Word actually makes it quite easy, provided you use wildcards in your F&R operation. Follow these steps:

1. Press Ctrl+H to display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Click the More button, if it is visible.
3. Make sure the Use Wildcards check box is selected.
4. In the Find What box, enter "$$$(*)\!$\!" (without the quote marks).
5. In the Replace With box, enter " \1" (again, without the quote marks). This tells Word to use, as replacement text, the first occurrence of text within parentheses in the pattern denoted in step 4.
6. With the insertion point still in the Replace With box, press Ctrl+i. (This tells Word that you want the replacement text to be formatted as italics.)
7. Click on Replace All.
8. Close the Find and Replace dialog box.

That's it; only a single find-and-replace operation is needed. The "find" pattern (in step 4) indicates you want to find anything (*) surrounded by your indicated markers. Important! that the backslashes before the exclamation marks in step 4 are important, as they cause the characters to be treated as actual exclamation marks.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3851) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021.