Tip of the week # 494
2 October 2016


Find and highlight all occurrences of a specific word or phrase (Microsoft Word) *

Back in 2015 I told you about the Navigation Pane in Word, which can be used to jump around your document in several ways. You can also use it to find specific text in your document. Simply type the word or phrase you want to find and every occurrence of the word or phrase is temporarily highlighted on the screen, allowing you to quickly spot and flick through the text you were searching for. However, the highlight disappears as soon as you make any change in the document.
So what if you want to keep the highlighted text? (With thanks to Monika for this week's tip inspiration.)

Here's how:

  1. Make sure that the insertion point is at the beginning of your document. (CTRL + Home, anyone?!)
  2. Click on the Replace button in the Editing group on the Home tab. (Or press CTRL + H.)
  3. Type the word you want to highlight in the Find what box.
  4. Press TAB and retype the word you want to highlight in the Replace with box.
  5. Click on the More button. (Or press TAB + ENTER.)
  6. Click on the Format button at the bottom of the dialog box and select Highlight.
  7. Click on the Replace All button.
  8. Click OK, followed by Close.

If you want to find and remove the highlighted text at some point, see tip_401.php.

See tip_466.php, tip_423.php and tip_415.php for additional information about how to get the most out of Words' navigation pane.


* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.