WISDOMBYDATA
  • BLOG
    • Blog Guide
    • Blog History
  • EXCEL
    • Functions & Formulas
    • VBA & Macros
    • VLOOKUP
    • Pivot Tables
    • Conditional Formatting
    • Tricks & Shortcuts
  • BI
    • SAP BOBJ/BW
    • Tableau
  • SQL
  • ABOUT
    • About WBD
    • About Me

Searching for Whole Words in MS Word/Excel

3/31/2016

0 Comments

 


​During one of my recent activities at work, I came across a situation where I needed to search for an abbreviation in a very large MS word document. The abbreviation was “PA”, which stands for a specific business term. I searched for the abbreviation using a typical “CTRL+F” method.

​The problem was that every time there were many words within that document that contained PA. For example the document was full of words such as Payment, Partition, PayPal, Company, etc. According to the screen shot below there were a total of 300 words which contained a “PA” in them.
Picture
This made the task of searching for the abbreviation very difficult as the CTRL+F would go through all words that contained PA and not only whole words.
 
As there is a solution to every problem, there is one for this one as well. Here is how to search for whole words in MS Office application such as MS Word. Just follow these three simple steps:
​
STEP 1] After pushing “CTRL+F” the navigation bar will appear on the left hand side. Click on the down arrow and select “Options”
Picture
STEP 2] Check mark the box for “Find Whole Words Only” and click "OK"
Picture
STEP 3] Search for the item/abbreviation that you are seeking. You should see fewer occurrences of that abbreviation. As per the screen shot below, there are only three references to the word “PA” as oppose to 300 when I wasn’t searching for the whole word!
Picture

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    BI
    EXCEL
    MISC
    SQL

    Archives

    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013

Picture
  • BLOG
    • Blog Guide
    • Blog History
  • EXCEL
    • Functions & Formulas
    • VBA & Macros
    • VLOOKUP
    • Pivot Tables
    • Conditional Formatting
    • Tricks & Shortcuts
  • BI
    • SAP BOBJ/BW
    • Tableau
  • SQL
  • ABOUT
    • About WBD
    • About Me