Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 8, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365
Word has a powerful search and replace capability that lets you search for virtually anything in your document. Word even includes codes you can use to search for special items. (Click the Special button in the Find and Replace dialog to see what codes are available.) One thing you cannot search for, however, is text boxes. There is no special code that allows you to find text boxes, and you can't search for them using the Object Browser.
You can, however, use a macro to look through a document and stop when it finds a text box. The following macro stops on each text box it finds and asks the user if that is the text box wanted.
Sub SearchTextBox() Dim shp As Shape Dim sTemp As String Dim iAnswer As Integer For Each shp In ActiveDocument.Range.ShapeRange If shp.Type = msoTextBox Then shp.Select Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.TextRange.Select sTemp = Selection.Text sTemp = Left(sTemp,20) iAnswer = MsgBox("Box contains text beginning with:" & vbCrLf _ & sTemp & vbCrLf & "Stop here?", vbYesNo, "Located Text Box") If iAnswer = vbYes Then Exit For End If Next shp End Sub
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12249) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Finding Text Boxes.
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