The FIND command doesn't work any more

Question

I have a long (60 pages) document that has the spell checker turned off because it is a vocabulary list for a foreign language class.  For a long time I was able to use the FIND command to see if I had already entered a vocabulary word, but recently FIND just quit working altogether.  Even when I copy and paste the word I am looking for, and it shows on the page I am viewing in the document, it won't find the word.  I am using Office 2007 on a Windows 7 desktop computer.  Any suggestions about why it quit working and how I can fix it?

Answer 1

Have you shut down and restarted word since Find stopped working?

If not, display the find dialog. Look closely under the "Find What:" input box. Is there ANY text there, say a style name? It should be "clean" white box all the way down to the "More/Find Next/Cancel" buttons.

Click on the More button. Look at the search options on the left side of the dialog. Are any of the options turned on.

If the "No Formatting" button is NOT grayed out, click on it.

Try searching again.

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Answer 2

Wow, thank you all so much for your suggestions, and for how quickly you provided them!  To answer some of the suggestions:

I have indeed not only closed Word but also rebooted several times since the problem surfaced, so that wasn't the problem.  The FIND command still worked in Excel, so it wasn't an Office-wide problem.  Thanks for the new knowledge that you can spell check in a different language – Word even lets you check in Latin, which is the language we are studying.  Don't know if that would work, as the dictionary entries in a vocabulary list also show the word endings, and there are different customs for indicating long vs short vowel sounds (some use macrons/tildes and some don't), but I'm glad to know it.

What actually worked was going into the FIND menu and realizing per one suggestion that something was going on with the formatting.  I clicked on the NO FORMATTING button to eliminate any formatting and voila! it worked again!  THANK YOU!!  I have no idea how formatting got included in the FIND selection in the first place, but no matter.

THANK YOU!

Answer 3

Is the ‘Find’ option working on other Office applications?

If the issue persists in other Office applications try repairing the Office installation and check if the ‘Find’ option functions properly.

Answer 4

I have a long (60 pages) document that has the spell checker turned off because it is a vocabulary list for a foreign language class.

Hi Hamgar,

If you're working with a table for the list and, say, the left column is in the 'foreign' language, you can select that column, then use Review|Set Language to change the spell-check language for that column to the 'foreign' language. The same principal can be applied where the 'foreign' language words are heading paragraphs for the 'native' language text below. In this case, you'd define a Paragraph Style for the 'foreign' language paragraphs so as to apply the 'foreign' spell-check language to all paragraphs using that Style, rather than having to modify each paragraph's language settings individually. And, even where you have 'foreign' language words interspersed amongst 'native' language text, you could use a Chracter Style to manage the language change for the 'foreign' language words. With any/all of these approaches, spell-check will check that you've used the correct spellings for both languages.

As to the Find problem, have you tried repairing your Word installation (Word Options|Resourse|Diagnose)?

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Cheers,

macropod MS MVP - Word

Answer 5

I do not know why it would stop working.

See if the following macro will find a word that you are looking for.  It will ask you for the word and then when you press OK, should find it.

Dim Findstr As String

Findstr = InputBox("Insert the text that you want to find.")

Selection.HomeKey wdStory

Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

With Selection.Find

    Do While .Execute(FindText:=Findstr, Forward:=True, _

        MatchWildcards:=False, Wrap:=wdFindStop, MatchCase:=False) = True

        Set myrange = Selection.Range

        Set prevline = Selection.Range.Duplicate

        prevline.MoveStart Unit:=wdSentence, Count:=-1

        prevline.Select

        ActiveWindow.ScrollIntoView Selection.Range, True

        MsgBox "Here is " & Findstr

        Selection.Collapse wdCollapseEnd

        Selection.MoveRight wdCharacter, 1

    Loop

End With

-- Hope this helps.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP,

dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org

Posted via the Community Bridge

"hamgar" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...

I have a long (60 pages) document that has the spell checker turned off because it is a vocabulary list for a foreign language class.  For a long time I was able to use the FIND command to see if I had already entered a vocabulary word, but recently FIND just quit working altogether.  Even when I copy and paste the word I am looking for, and it shows on the page I am viewing in the document, it won't find the word.  I am using Office 2007 on a Windows 7 desktop computer.  Any suggestions about why it quit working and how I can fix it?

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org