Microsoft Word – Tips & Tricks

By: Paul Linh Nguyen ()

Last updated: 2014/03/05

Show Formatting Marks

In Microsoft Word, there is a world normally hidden from us. It plays a crucial role in how our document looks and feels. Fortunately, Word has the option for us to look beyond the veil and understand it. This is the world of formatting marks.

By enabling “Show Formatting Marks” can we better understand what is going on behind the scene that affects how our document looks. As an added benefit, a better understanding of these formatting marks can help make utilizing Word’s Find & Replace feature with greater efficacy.

Word 2010

Shortcut key: CTRL+* (or CTRL+SHIFT+8)

For reference, please visit:

2010 -

2007 -

2003 -

See also SasaKranjac’s page “Formatting Marks in Word 2010 + Show/Hide” for more details @

Find & Replace

When working with text documents, more often than not we’ll begin to notice patterns in the document as we are cleaning it up. Sometimes we can take advantage of these known patterns to help expedite our work.

More importantly, these patterns can also exist in the form of formatting marks as well! So do remember to keep that option enabled! We can tap into these in Find & Replace under the “Special” button.

Shortcut key: CTRL + H

Sample

# / Observations / Takeaway
1 / We want to retain our paragraph blocks. / Notice that before each block, it is preceded by a “∙¶¶”
2 / Lines are broken early with hard returns. / Notice that each line ends with “∙¶”
3 / Each page splits are indicated. / Splits indicated by “------Page∙Break------”

What we’ll do

  1. Find what:“^p^p”Note: ^p corresponds to ¶. Note also there the preceding whitespace.
    Replace with:“^p^p”
  1. Find what:“^p”
    Replace with:“”Note: We are replacing with a whitespace
  1. Find what:“^m”Note: ^m corresponds to manual page breaks
    Replace with:“Page ”

Tips

  • In what order you decide to do certain Find & Replace is important!
  • There is no one “right” way! Save your file and experiment!

Some typical Find & Replace usages

Highlighting all numbers to catch potential digits that sneak into words. / Find: ^#
Replace: ^& (with Formatting: Highlight)
Replacing optional hyphens / Find: -^p
Replace: (blank/nothing)

Be sure to check out Graham Mayor’s page “Find and Replace using wildcards”. It has a nice listing of control codes and along with some guides.

Macros

Finding yourself doing the same task over and over? Make your life potentially easier with macros! Macros allow you to repeat a task with a click of a mouse or a stroke of a key (or keyboard shortcut).

(Microsoft Word 2010)

You can easily have it record what you do under “Record Macro…”

If you DO have a familiarity with coding or know someone who does (ask/beg?), you can dive into the code and further customize it!

There are many resources on this available online. Even our very familiar yellow book “For Dummies” has a video on it on YouTube.

“How to Create Macros in Word 2007 for Dummies” at

Also check out Microsoft’s “Record or run a macro” at

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