Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007 and 2010. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Formatting Partial Results of a Search.
Agnes has a series of paragraphs that begin with a title that is followed by a period and two spaces. She would like to search for this pattern (multiple words at the beginning of a paragraph followed by a period and two spaces) and underline just the words, exclusive of the period and the spaces.
This can be done with a wildcard search, in the following manner:
Figure 1. The Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
That's it. The search pattern you entered in step 4 indicates that you want to search for paragraph marks (^13) followed by any length combination of letters and digits ([A-z 0-9]{1,}), terminated by a period and two spaces ([!. ]). The exclamation mark on means that while the period and two spaces are to be used to determine a match, they aren't to be included in the actual text that is found.
All of this is then used in the Replace With, as the ^& combination means to use the "found" text as the replacement. This, however, is formatted with an underline.
Understand that steps 2 and 9 are very important. If you don't do the search from the bottom of the document toward the top, you won't get the desired results.
As presented above, the steps result in all the text before the period being underlined. If you prefer to have a different type of underline (such as underlining only the words), then in step 7 you should click the Format button, choose Font, and use the Underline drop-down list to specify the type of underline you desire.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9077) applies to Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Formatting Partial Results of a Search.
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2015-12-12 13:53:54
Phil Rabichow
OK. Problem solved, but with a different solution. It's a 3 step process.
Using wildcards:
1. Find: (^13[A-z 0-9]{1,})([.][ ]{2})
Note that this uses 2 expressions. The first finds a paragraph mark followed by any combination of letters, spaces, & numbers. The 2nd finds a single period followed by 2 spaces.
Replace all: 1%%%% & press Ctrl+U to make it underlined. The 1 replaces only the first expression, so the %%%% (any series of characters that aren't in your document) replaces the period & two spaces, all underlined.
2. Find: %%%%
Replace all: press Ctrl+U to change the formatting to "no underline" & type a period & 2 spaces. (then do replace all)
This technique is the only one I found that changes part of a "find".
2015-12-12 13:41:18
Phil Rabichow
For some reason, this isn't working for me...and it should.
I started by putting in =(rand) for a bunch of paragraphs "The quick brown etc.". In front of some of them, I wrote "This is Title 1, This is Title 2" (no quotes). I followed it with a period & 2 spaces. All the rest of my sentences are separated by 1 space.
If I put in:
^13[A-z 0-9]{1,}[.][ ]{2} OR
^13[A-z 0-9]{1,}[.][ ]{2} OR
it will correctly search up. However, if I put in an exclamation point at the beginning of the last 2 expressions, it finds the beginning of every paragraph. Also, if I change the last expression to [ ], (that's 2 spaces), Word treats it as only 1 space & finds the first sentence in every paragraph.
Any ideas?
2015-06-12 12:55:43
Rick G.
I agree with Sam in that (in Word 2010) the behavior doesn't quite match the description. It is interesting though.
The tip instructions say to search from the bottom up and I wondered why. If I search from the top down, it behaves as Sam indicates, it only underlines strings at the start of a paragraph that do NOT end with a period ("!"="Not"), but do end with some other punctuation, such as a question mark.
If I search from the bottom up as instructed, it does behave differently, but not quite as described in the tip. It underlines strings at the start of a paragraph that end with any punctuation (period, question mark, etc.), and it does not need to be followed by two spaces. So the [!. ] doesn't seem to do anything when searching from the bottom up.
2014-06-26 07:09:01
Sam
Hi!
This is really useful – thanks!
However, from what I can tell, you're not right about this:
"The exclamation mark on means that while the period and two spaces are to be used to determine a match, they aren't to be included in the actual text that is found."
The exclamation mark is an excluder, meaning that you search for anything which isn't what comes after it.
e.g. if you search for [!o] you will search for any character except the letter "o".
However, the function you alluded to here – including something in the search but then not replacing it – is exactly what I want to know how to do!
Any tips for this would be much appreciated!
Thanks
Sam
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007 and 2010. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
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