Deleting text using Find/Replace

Question

Hello,

I would like to use te find/replace feature in Word to find "DELETE XXXXXX" and replace it with a line break. XXXXXX can be any word. Please advise. Thank you!

Debbie

Answer 1

Hi Debbie,

The trick to replacing many unknown words is to use a wildcard search. For this specific task:

• Open the Replace dialog (Ctrl+H) and click the More button to expand the bottom of the dialog.
• Check the box for "Use wildcards".
• In the Find What box, type or copy/paste the search expression

DELETE [A-Za-z0-9 .,]@^13

• If you want to remove the entire line including the paragraph mark, leave the Replace With box empty. To keep the paragraph mark, type ^p in that box.

• Click the Replace All button. That will remove every line in the document that matches the search expression.

For more information about wildcard searches, see https://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm .

Answer 2

Thank you, Jay! This solution worked perfectly. You're a genius!