Multiple word search

[floormat]

Looking for a way to simultaneously search for several words at once.



Like cat, dog, ferret, gerbil & hamster. If any of these pop up in document X it would either highlight them all or like a normal ctrl+F search start at the top stopping at each word along the way. Also if i typed in all of those words replace all with animals or just delete them all would be nice options.

I know this seems small and I wouldn't bug but I do this sort of thing at work and home all the time. I could save so much time if I could search for multiple words simultaneously.

I prefer to use Microsoft word but I am open to trying different programs.

This seems so simple but after quite a bit of searching (like hours literally) I still haven't found out how. Should be as easy as cat AND dog AND ferret or something but I have had no luck so far.

thanks for any and all help you can offer.

[macropod]

Unless the words you want to search for are amenable to grouping in a single wildcard expression, you'll have to Find each of them separately. For example, in another forum, someone wanted to be able to find the words Attachment, Figure, Table & Paragraph followed by a number, period, then another number. The following wildcard Find expression does that:
<[AFTP][ait][bgrt][autl][! ]@ [0-9]{1,}.[0-9]{1,}

You cannot use expressions like 'cat AND dog AND ferret' to find cat, dog or ferret - The Find dialogue (quite reasonably) regards AND as a word. If you have large lists of words to process, that can be done by having them in another document or in an Excel workbook. For an example of the former approach, see: https://www.msofficeforums.com/word-...html#post72330
For an example of the latter approach, which also processes all documents in a folder, see: https://www.msofficeforums.com/word-...html#post34254

[floormat]

Thank you for the reply. To be honest its a bit over my head. I guess I am just used to using AND, OR, +, "" and other key variables when searching in outlook or the web and was hoping something similar would work for word. Thanks.

[macropod]

While that kind of searching is supported in some apps, they aren't word-processors and they don't offer the prospect of replacing what is found. Neither do Excel or PowerPoint, for example, offer that kind of searching; both of those apps, too, offer the prospect of replacing what is found.