Wildcards in Word

Question

Is there some way to switch the words hello and looking directly with wildcards in Word in the find and replace-box?

In a nunc tortor hello. Nunc luctus dui molestie sapien semper placerat. Cras commodo enim ac tortor hendrerit eget pellentesque turpis cursus. Ut ac lorem eget diam commodo laoreet et sed orci. In egestas pretium dui ut auctor. Phasellus tristique purus in nisi commodo ultrices. Nulla facilisi. Ut in looking augue quam.

Find ???

Replace ???

Answer 1

If you want to witch places for only two words you can use wildcards like this

Find: (word1)(*)(word2)

Replace: \3\2\1

Make sure you check "Use wildcards" option in More.

If you however want to change all occurances of word1 to word2 and vice-versa use the approach that Slink84 suggested.

Answer 2

And if you want those two words to switch places in the whole text, then you will have to use replace in three steps:

• replace hello with some other string, that is not present in your text (i.e. "{~*~}")
• replace looking with hello
• replace that special string "{~*~}" (or some other you have used) with looking

Of course, this is only worth doing when these words are in the text more than just in several places...

Answer 3

This is quite a good resource on find and replace using wildcards in Word GMayor Replace Using Wildcards. There is some mention of Word 2007, but I'm not sure if that's what the article is based upon. I'm sure it'll all still apply to Word 2007 though.

Answer 4

If I understand what you are looking for, open your document and press Ctrl+H which should bring up this:

And from here, you should be able to do what you want.

If this is not what you were looking for, please be more specific in your question and I will try to help further.