Finding Documents Containing Multiple Occurrences of a Word

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 7, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365


Brian has a lot of Word documents. When displaying the Open dialog box or when using a regular folder window, he can search and display only documents that contain a specific word. He wonders, though, if there is a way to display only documents that contain at least two occurrences (or more) of a particular word. In other words, he wants to exclude the display of documents that either don't contain the word or that have only a single occurrence of the word.

This is actually quite easy to do—just use a wildcard character when setting up your search. For instance, let's say that you want to search for documents that contain at least two instances of the word "widget." You could use this as your search criteria:

widget*widget

Note that the asterisk is a wildcard; it matches any number of characters. Thus, you end up searching for "widget" followed by any number of characters and then another instance of "widget." If the document contains only a single occurrence of the word "widget," then this search string automatically excludes those documents.

In order for this approach to work, you'll need to make sure that the "Always search file names and contents" option is selected in the Search tab of Folder Options dialog box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9957) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Duplicate Workbooks Opening

If you ever open a workbook and always see two workbooks instead of one, chances are good the reason is because of the ...

Discover More

Tab Key Jumps a Screen at a Time

Have you ever pressed the Tab key, expecting to move to the next cell in your worksheet, only to have Excel completely ...

Discover More

Weighted Averages in a PivotTable

PivotTables are used to boil down huge data sets into something you can more easily understand. They are very good simple ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! An easy-to-understand guide to the more advanced features available in the Microsoft 365 version of Word. Enhance the quality of your documents and boost productivity in any field with this in-depth resource. Complete your Word-related tasks more efficiently as you unlock lesser-known tools and learn to quickly access the features you need. Check out Microsoft 365 Word For Professionals For Dummies today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Incorrect Page Counts Shown in Status Bar

A common statistic to see on the status bar is what page number you are working on in your document. If the page numbers ...

Discover More

Page Counts for Many Documents

Need to see the page count on a large number of documents? Windows provides an easy way to see the information you ...

Discover More

Linking Word Documents

Want to add one document to another document? You can do it by adding links, described in this tip.

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is eight more than 8?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.