Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. 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: A Fast Find-Next.
Word provides a fast, efficient, and flexible searching feature. Using the Find and Replace tool, you can search for just about anything in your document. I find myself using Find quite often in the course of creating a document, but there is one thing about Find that bothers me: I hate having the Find dialog box block part of my document as I am stepping through occurrences of a search string in my document. Clicking on Find Next works great, but that bothersome dialog box is still blocking my view.
To overcome this, I generally do the following when I am searching for something:
This procedure works the same as clicking Find Next repeatedly, and it is just as fast, but it gets rid of the annoying Find dialog box.
The above steps work great if you are using Word 2007. However, there is no dialog box that appears in Word 2010 or later versions, unless you are using the advanced Find and Replace capabilities. Instead, what you are looking for (and instances of what is found) is shown at the left side of the document. This can be convenient, but for "old timers," the Shift+F4 shortcut is handier because it works even without the Find pane displayed.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12327) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: A Fast Find-Next.
Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 2013 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access) with VBA programming, using it for writing macros, automating Office applications, and creating custom applications. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2013 today!
Word has a powerful find and replace capability that can help you perform quite a few changes to your documents. This tip ...
Discover MoreNeed to find all the instances of a particular word and change the formatting of those instances? It's easy to do using the ...
Discover MoreThe color used by Word to draw your attention to "found text" when using Find and Replace can vary, based on a number of ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2016-09-02 16:43:28
Len
Didn't work in my Word 2013. The thing I don't like about Find is that if I spot something I want to change, changing it nullifies my Find. How can I just jump into the text, fix something, and click Find Next? Any way around this?
Len
2016-08-08 10:15:59
Amy
Wow, I never knew there were keyboard shortcuts for that, and now I know three! I was really inconvenienced when Word removed the page up-down/browse next arrows from the scroll bar. I ended up adding them to my QAT, which helped. Thanks for the tips.
2016-08-08 08:51:58
Jennifer Thomas
And let's not forget our old friend 'Browse by Object' (at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar) - finding something automatically sets the tool's current 'object to be found' as the next find/go to, so you can just click the blue arrows to navigate.
2016-08-08 08:09:06
Drew Trott
A third alternative for Find Again, which keeps one's fingers closer to the home keys, is CTRL-ALT-Y.
2016-08-07 12:21:02
Christine
I love keyboard shortcuts, and didn't know about Shift +F4. However, I have always used Ctrl + Page Down/Up which also works well for this find next function, although I have no idea if there's an advantage of one method over the other?
F4 is a great time saver when formatting repetitively, too, it repeats the last action performed.
2016-08-06 11:51:03
Vin Weasel
You also can use Ctrl+PgDn to find the next occurrence, and then Ctrl+PgUp to find the previous occurrence.
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.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2017 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. 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: 
Comments