Find and Replace not working

Question

Hi all,

I am using the find and replace function with wildcards and for some reason it will not find text that 100% IS there. For example, I have text something like this. (Ignore that it's meaningless.)

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[example in text]Kimberly[a first name] Christensen**[a last name], An Example Article Title, Newsweek[a journal title]** (2012)[year].

When I use find and replace with wildcards, bold font, the following: [*]   , it selects only "a last name", "a journal title", and "year", but for some utterly inexplicable reason, not "example in text" or "a first name".

If I add new bolded bracket text, F&R does not find it.

If I copy and paste the "example in text" bracket, F&R does not find.

If I type it anew, F&R does not find.

If I create a new document and copy and paste, F&R does not find.

If I create a new document and RE-TYPE the sentence, F&R DOES FIND it. (Of course, this is unhelpful to me as I'm not going to re-type a document that already exists.)

If I take off wildcards and just search for bolded text, F&R only finds random characters in bold (a period here, a few letters there).

Showing paragraph marks/hidden character symbols does not show any irregularity. The font type or size does not seem to matter (Italics, small caps doesn't change result.)

I cannot figure out for my life why this would happen. Can anyone advise?

Answer 1

If I copy the text from your post and then use the Wildcard find that you mention, it finds each of the five instances of bold text enclosed by square brackets

[example in text]

[a first name]

[a last name]

[a journal title]

[year].

Answer 2

I wouild have to see the original document to be able to shed any light on the problem.

If you send me a copy of the document, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate the issue.

Answer 3

That's precisely the problem. What should work doesn't. If I manipulate a sentence enough, like typing it again, F&R works. Copying and pasting it from this website will make it work fine.

Note: If you make the search "not bold", it finds all non-bolded bracketed text (i.e. it works normally). If you make the search without formatting, it finds all bracketed text (i.e. it works normally and finds bold bracketed text as well). Thus it's a bug in which it finds only some bold bracketed text. What is the bug and how do I fix it?

Answer 4

I tried this, but it didn't work, unfortunately.

Answer 5

Hi, Jonofalltrades1

I am Akiva independent advisor

it is clear that it is a malfunction of MS Office has tried to repair MS Office? follow the instructions of the following link to do it

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/repair...

I hope to be helpful

I hope it helps