Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. 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: Searching for ASCII and ANSI Characters.

Searching for ASCII and ANSI Characters

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated February 10, 2020)

2

Word allows you to search for any ASCII or ANSI character. To search for ASCII characters, follow these steps:

  1. Press Ctrl+F. Word displays the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box (Word 2007) or the Navigation pane at the left side of the screen (Word 2010 and Word 2013).
  2. In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. To search for an ASCII character, enter a carat (^) followed by the three numbers representing the ASCII value of the character. For instance, to search for an uppercase A, you could enter ^065.
  3. Set other searching parameters, as desired.
  4. Click on Find Next.

You can search for an ANSI character by following these steps:

  1. Press Ctrl+F. Word displays the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box (Word 2007) or the Navigation pane at the left side of the screen (Word 2010 and Word 2013).
  2. In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. To search for an ANSI character, enter a carat (^) followed by a zero and the three numbers representing the ANSI value of the character.
  3. Set other searching parameters, as desired.
  4. Click on Find Next.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9690) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Searching for ASCII and ANSI Characters.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is nine minus 4?

2019-05-15 09:55:24

Andrew

John, place the cursor just after one of the offending pilcrows and type Alt-X. This should convert the character into the ANSI code of the actual character in hexadecimal. Convert the hexadecimal to a decimal and enter it as a 4-digit number (beginning with 0) following the caret in the Find What box.

2019-05-14 15:49:02

John W

Sometimes my search can find a paragraph (^p) and sometimes not. The ones it finds look identical to the ones it does not find.

I have 72,000 replacements to do in a file and 141 do not get done.

I have noticed some of the pilcrow characters have a solid top loop and some do not. All of these do not.

Any ideas?

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