How to Change Formats Quicker in Excel and Word

Microsoft’s ‘find and replace’ function is a lot more powerful than most people think.  More than just a way to replace text, it is actually possible to do a search and replace on formatting as well!

Quick Formatting in Word

Tech blog Codejacked recently talked about how he could change fonts quickly by clicking on the ‘more button’ in the ‘Find and Replace’ feature of Microsoft Word.  He went on to state the following:

“Changing fonts is just the tip of the iceberg. This technique can be used with any sort of formatting (paragraphs, styles, etc.)  Also, be sure to click on the Special button to see the options that are available there (Any Digit, Any Letter, etc.)  These wildcards and special symbols (along with plain text) can be used in combination with the formatting criteria.  For example, it’s possible to change all negative numbers to red this way, by specifying the Find What as a minus sign followed by the Any Digit notation and by specifying the Replace With as nothing but with a font color of red”

Quick Formatting in Excel

Well after some investigation, it turns out similar functionality can be found in MS-Excel (Not for PowerPoint unfortunately).  Just click the ‘Options’ button in Excel ‘Find and Replace’ to get access to these extra features.

excel find and replace

With this, I can find and replace a certain type of cell format, or just select the format from a pre-existing cell. While there is a time and place for using the ‘Excel format painter‘, this ‘find and replace’ feature makes more complicated format changes much faster.

Do you know any other quick formatting tricks for Microsoft Office?  Let us know in the comments!

[tags]word, excel, format[/tags]

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    • 7 Responses to 'How to Change Formats Quicker in Excel and Word'

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    1. Boss Lepton said,

      on April 22nd, 2007 at 10:45 am

      Hi James, just wondering, does openoffice offer the same feature?

    2. James Yeang said,

      on April 22nd, 2007 at 11:55 am

      Boss Lepton: Unfortunately, I don’t think it is possible for Open Office.

    3. Kunal said,

      on May 19th, 2007 at 1:46 am

      Can u explain the exact procedure for changing formats quickly in MS-WORD?

    4. James Yeang said,

      on May 20th, 2007 at 7:02 am

      For MS Word - just use this link

      http://www.codejacked.com/quick-tip-using-ms-words-search-replace-on-formatting/

    5. Carolyn Mazur said,

      on July 5th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

      Hi there,
      Would you know how to do a Find & Replace to change the format of an individual word within a cell without changing the format of the entire cell?

      For example, let’s say you have the word “apple” used many times within cells all over your Excel spreadsheet, and you would like to format any instance of the word “apple” within a cell as *red* and *bold*. How do you format each instance of the word using Find&Replace without the format transferring to the entire cell? When I do it, the whole cell turns red and bold rather than just the word I specified.

      Thanks!
      Carolyn

    6. James Yeang said,

      on July 8th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

      That’s a tricky one Carolyn, I’ve only managed to pull of recoloring the whole cell too…

    7. Sanwar Mal said,

      on December 18th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

      hi

      Can u tell me how to change a digit in numbers in ms excel

      thanx

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