Finding special characters is a useful way to clean up a document. The special characters can be added from the Special button list or directly as codes.

See the Find and Replace Tips – Formatting for the general process. The only difference is that you enter the codes instead of text.

For example, suppose you wanted to turn part of a letter from a block style with a blank line between paragraphs to an indented paragraph with a regular space between paragraphs. The process is to find the paragraph separators (2 paragraph marks) and replace them with a paragraph mark and a tab. The paragraph mark ends the paragraph and the tab begins the next one.

1. Select the portion of the letter to change.
2. Click into the Find field. Enter two Paragraph mark codes. Either select Paragraph mark from the Special button menu two times, or type ^p^p (lowercase p).
3. In the Replace field, enter a single Paragraph mark code and a tab code (^t).
4. Replace All will affect just the selected text.

Another common problem is getting mailing lists back into a format that is mail mergable. For example, suppose you’ve gotten a list formatted as follows:

John Doe
123 East Street
Anytown, MA 00001

Sally Smith
345 West Street
Yourtown, CT 00002

Each of these lines ends with a paragraph mark (^p code) and each record is separated by an additional paragraph mark. The solution is to use intermediate replacement text to get rid of the paragraph separators, then turn each line of the address into a tab separated value:

1. Replace ^p^p with a pattern that is not likely to be in the text. I like @#@ since it is easy to type and not at all common.
2. Replace ^p with a tab character, ^t.
3. Replace @#@ with a paragraph mark.

This will convert your list into a tab-delimited file, easily used by Word or imported into Excel, Access, etc. If you plan to export it, make sure to save the file as a text file to remove extraneous Word codes.

If you have a mix of 3 and 4 line addresses, as is more common, this is a little trickier. I end up importing it into Excel and using a set of text functions to parse the text as well as to break the City, State, and Zipcode lines into separate fields. But that is another tip.

In the 80′s, search and replace (as it was known then) seemed the second coolest thing about word processing. The first, of course, was never having to re-type a document. These days, with the use of templates, styles, and Word’s New From Existing Document, it seems less necessary.

However, for cleaning up documents and combining files with inconsistent formatting, nothing beats Find and Replace. Except, perhaps, for Find and Replace in Word coupled with some of Excel’s features.

First off, you can easily Find and Replace formatting:

1. Select Find or Replace from the Edit menu (or CTRL+h).
2. Click the More button to display your options.
3. In the Find field, type any text you want to search for. Leave it blank if you just want to search for formatting.
   Make sure your cursor is still in the Find field and click the Format button. Select the formatting from this menu as you would any formatting from the Format menu. You can search for fonts, attributes, font size, indentation, styles, and more.
4. Click into the Replace field. If you have text in the Find field, make sure to add it to the Replace field or Word will delete all occurrences of the text.
5. Select the new formatting from the menu on the Format button.

It is a good idea to use Find Next and Replace for the first couple of changes to make sure it is behaving properly.

TIPS:

• Remove formatting by clicking into the Find or Replace field, then clicking No Formatting. You’ll have to do this separately for Find and Replace. If you forget, Word will combine your next search for text with the formatting you have selected.
• You may have to make several passes. If so, be strategic and leave formatting you can find for the second go-round. If you want to go from Bold and Underlined to Italic, make sure to Find both Bold and Underlined and replace it with Italic and No Underline. This will replace your Bold and Underlined text with Italic and Bold. Then search for Bold and replace it with Not Bold. Tricky. The problem is you can’t search for Bold and Italic at the same time.
• If your Search and Replace becomes Search and Destroy, an immediate Undo (CTRL-Z or Edit | Undo) will undo your last replacement. You did save your document before your Find and Replace, didn’t you?
• If the Find fails, make sure that you don’t have formatting you don’t want included in the Find. Also, check the Direction of the Find. If it is Down or Up, Word will start at the insertion point. Change it to All to guarantee you’ll find every instance.

You can use this tip to automatically create a list of items that you use frequently.

For example, let’s say that you need to list the days of the week as follows:

S = Sunday
M = Monday
T = Tuesday
W = Wednesday
Th = Thursday
F = Friday
Sa = Saturday

You probably know that you can List the full name of the days or three-letter abbreviations by typing any one day in a cell and using Extend (the thin black cross in the lower right corner of the cell) to fill in succeeding days.

However, there are probably other lists (such as the one above) that you have to type more than once that are not stored in Excel by default. (Examples might be lists of employees, products, parts, sales regions, etc.)

To use Extend to create your own custom list:

1. Type the list into a spreadsheet (down a column or across a row, doesn’t matter which).
2. Select the list.
3. Select Tools | Options.
4. Click on the Custom Lists tab.
5. Click the Import button in the lower right corner.



6. Excel will add the new list.
7. Click OK.
8. Test the list by typing the first (or any) item on the list and use Extend.

To edit the list:

1. Select Tools | Options.
2. Select the Custom Lists tab.
3. Select the list you want to edit from Custom Lists on the left.
4. Edit the list entries.
5. Click the Add button.
6. Click OK.
7. Test the edited list with Extend.

Here’s an Excel tip you can use to impress your friends (or boss)!

To quickly create an Excel chart:

Select the data to chart and press F11 (on the top row of the keyboard).

Voila! A chart!

We try to mention both of these shortcuts in most of our classes because everyone seems to love them!

Both shortcuts make use of the Windows key, the one between the left CTRL and left ALT keys on most keyboards. It looks like this:

The first one lets you get back to the Desktop with one keystroke. (Many people use the Show Desktop icon on the Quick Launch Toolbar for this purpose, but I think this short cut is quicker.)

To show the Desktop: + d.

The second opens My Computer in Explorer view, which means that the Folder list is open on the left. This is very handy if you have to do any kind of file management task, such as creating a folder, moving or copying files, deleting files, renaming files, etc.

To open a My Computer/Explorer window: + e.