Have you ever written a document and been concerned that you may have overused a specific word or term throughout the text? If so, there’s a tool in Word that allows you to check that. To use the tool follow these steps.
1. In a Word document, hit CTRL + H (that’s CTRL and the H key at the same time) to open the Find and Replace dialog box
2. In the “Find what:” field, type in the word you’d like to search for. In this example I’m searching for “really”.
3. In the “Replace with:” field, type in ^&. That is a carat and ampersand. (It will not replace the word with a “^&” but this is the syntax necessary for Word to count the number of times a word appears in the text.
4. Where the box below shows the “Less” button, your dialog box may say “More”, if so, click the More button to display the Search Options panel.
5. In the Search drop down menu, make sure the option is set to All
6. Click the checkbox next to “Find whole words only”
7. Finally, click the Replace All button
You will be presented with a box that tells you how many times that word appeared in the document. The search does not actually replace the words.
8. Click OK
9. Optional - If you’d like to see where specifically each word in the document appears, click the Find Next button until you’ve looked through the entire document. When all of the specifc words have been tabbed through, a box will be displayed indicating that Word has finished searching the document. Click OK when you see that box.
10. Click the Close button in the Find and Replace dialog box to exit back out to your document.
To provide feedback or submit a technical topic/question you’d like to see addressed, please send e-mails to Matt.Jury@education.ky.gov.
Published 7/30/2010