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Excel For Mac Find And Replace Special Characters

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‎This tutorial shows you three ways to find and replace special characters in Microsoft Word:

1. Enter special characters directly into the Find and Replace dialog box

Sep 30, 2016. How to Find and Replace in Excel: Wildcards, Values, and Formulas! Written by co-founder Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist. Excel's search functions are great. But if you aren't using the result in another cell, you can use a more familiar tool. The Find and Replace dialog is very powerful, especially once you get a handle on its more advanced features. Click on 'Replace All' or just 'Replace' if you want to go cell by cell. In some cases, there a space characters at the end of a line. When that happens, you will get a double space. You might want to use the replace function again, but this time replace all double spaces (type 2x space on the keyboard) by just one space. Special menu. The special character will appear in the Find what text box as a caret code. The caret code for the em dash appears in figure 12, below. Enter the replacement character in the Replace with text box. (Repeat step 5 and step 6 if you are replacing the existing character with one of the seven available in this dialog box. Jan 15, 2010.

2. Select special characters from within the Find and Replace dialog box

3. Use keyboard shortcuts or caret codes

We'll focus on the preset special characters available through Word's Symbol dialog box.

This tutorial is also available as a YouTube video showing all the steps in real time.

Watch more than fifty other videos about Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat on my YouTube channel.

Please note that Word's Find and Replace tool doesn't work with ten of the special characters related to formatting: 1/4 em space, no-width optional break, no-width nonbreak, left-to-right mark, right-to-left mark, left-to-right embedding, right-to-left embedding, left-to-right override, right-to-left override, and pop directional formatting.

For more information on special characters, visit 'What Are Special Characters in Microsoft Word?' and 'How to Insert Special Characters in Microsoft Word.'

The images below are from Word for Office 365, which is currently the same as Word 2019. The steps are the same for Word 2016 and similar for Word 2013 and Word 2010.

Enter Special Characters Directly into the Find and Replace Dialog Box‎‏

Twelve special characters can be inserted directly into the Find and Replace dialog box by selecting the character:

  • Em dash
  • En dash
  • Em space
  • En space
  • Copyright symbol
  • Registered symbol
  • Trademark
  • Section symbol
  • Paragraph symbol
  • Ellipsis
  • Double opening quote
  • Double closing quote

To insert special characters directly into the Find and Replace dialog box:

1. Select the special character in your text. (The copyright symbol appears in this example.)

2. Select the Home tab in the ribbon.

3. Select Replace in the Editing group.

4. Ensure that the special character appears in the Find what text box in the Find and Replace dialog box. (Some special characters aren't visible in the text box, so do a test run before selecting the Replace All button in step 6.)

5. Enter the replacement character in the Replace with text box. (The trademark appears in this example.)

6. Select the Replace, Replace All, or Find Next button.

  • Replace replaces the next occurrence.
  • Replace All replaces all occurrences.
  • Find Next finds the next occurrence without making a replacement.

If you selected Replace All, a series of small dialog boxes will tell you how many replacements were made. Select the Yes and OK buttons to close those dialog boxes.

7. Select the Close button to close the Find and Replace dialog box.

Pro Tip: You can also copy (ctrl + c) and paste (ctrl + v) the twelve special characters mentioned above directly into the Find and Replace dialog box.

Select Special Characters from within the Find and Replace Dialog Box

Seven special characters can be inserted into the Find and Replace dialog box through the Special drop-down menu:

  • Em dash
  • En dash
  • Nonbreaking hyphen
  • Optional hyphen
  • Section symbol
  • Paragraph symbol

To select special characters from within the Find and Replace dialog box:

1. Select the Home tab in the ribbon (see figure 2).

2. Select Replace in the Editing group (see figure 3).

3. Place your cursor in the Find what text box in the Find and Replace dialog box.

4. Select the More button. (Skip to Step 5 if the Less button is already visible.)

5. Select the Special button.

6. Select the special character from the menu.

The special character will appear in the Find what text box as a caret code. The caret code for the em dash appears in figure 12, below.

7. Enter the replacement character in the Replace with text box. (Repeat step 5 and step 6 if you are replacing the existing character with one of the seven available in this dialog box. The caret code for the en dash appears in this example.)

8. Select the Replace, Replace All, or Find Next button (see figure 6).

9. Select the Close button to close the Find and Replace dialog box (see figure 7).

Use Keyboard Shortcuts or Caret Codes

Fifteen special characters can be inserted into the Find and Replace dialog box using a keyboard shortcut and/or a caret code:

  • Em dash
  • En dash
  • Nonbreaking hyphen
  • Optional hyphen
  • Nonbreaking space
  • Copyright symbol
  • Registered symbol
  • Trademark
  • Section symbol
  • Paragraph symbol
  • Ellipsis
  • Single opening quote
  • Single closing quote
  • Double opening quote
  • Double closing quote

The table below lists the keyboard shortcuts and caret codes for finding and replacing the special characters listed above. Several of these special characters have a keyboard shortcut and a caret code.

To insert special characters using keyboard shortcuts or caret codes:

Excel Replace Tab Character

1. Select the Home tab in the ribbon (see figure 2).

2. Select Replace in the Editing group (see figure 3).

3. Type the keyboard shortcut or caret code into the Find what text box (see figure 4).

Find And Replace Tab Character

4. Enter the replacement character in the Replace with text box (see figure 5).

5. Select the Replace, Replace All, or Find Next button (see figure 6).

6. Select the Close button to close the Find and Replace dialog box (see figure 7).

Pro Tip: You can also use the keyboard shortcuts shown above to insert special characters directly into your text. For a full list of keyboard shortcuts for special characters, see 'How to Insert Special Characters in Microsoft Word.'

How to replace tilde and wildcard characters in Excel?

As you know, we can use wildcard characters (the question mark and asterisk) to represent any single/series of characters when replacing in Excel. However, how can you replace the wildcard characters literally from strings? This article will introduce an easy way to replace all tilde and wildcard characters in Excel.

Replace tilde and wildcard characters in Excel

To replace the tilde or wildcard characters in Excel, please do as follows:

1. Select the range where you will replace the tilde or wildcard characters, and press Ctrl + H keys to open the Find and Replace dialog box.

Find and replace tab character

2. In the Find and Replace dialog box, under Replace tab, please type ~* in the Find what box, type the specified character you will replace within the Replace with box, and click the Replace All button. See screenshot:
Note: ~* will replace all asterisks in the selection. To replace all question marks, please type ~? In the Find what box; and to replace all tildes, please type ~~.

Excel For Mac Find And Replace Special Characters List

3. Click the OK button in the popping out Microsoft Excel dialog box. And then close the Find and Replace dialog box.

Now you will see the specified wildcard characters are replaced with a certain character in the selection.

Mac Excel Find And Replace Special Characters

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Excel For Mac Find And Replace Special Characters Without

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Mac

2. In the Find and Replace dialog box, under Replace tab, please type ~* in the Find what box, type the specified character you will replace within the Replace with box, and click the Replace All button. See screenshot:
Note: ~* will replace all asterisks in the selection. To replace all question marks, please type ~? In the Find what box; and to replace all tildes, please type ~~.

Excel For Mac Find And Replace Special Characters List

3. Click the OK button in the popping out Microsoft Excel dialog box. And then close the Find and Replace dialog box.

Now you will see the specified wildcard characters are replaced with a certain character in the selection.

Mac Excel Find And Replace Special Characters

Related articles:

The Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Excel Solves Most of Your Problems, and Increases Your Productivity by 80%

  • Reuse: Quickly insert complex formulas, charts and anything that you have used before; Encrypt Cells with password; Create Mailing List and send emails...
  • Super Formula Bar (easily edit multiple lines of text and formula); Reading Layout (easily read and edit large numbers of cells); Paste to Filtered Range...
  • Merge Cells/Rows/Columns without losing Data; Split Cells Content; Combine Duplicate Rows/Columns... Prevent Duplicate Cells; Compare Ranges...
  • Select Duplicate or Unique Rows; Select Blank Rows (all cells are empty); Super Find and Fuzzy Find in Many Workbooks; Random Select...
  • Exact Copy Multiple Cells without changing formula reference; Auto Create References to Multiple Sheets; Insert Bullets, Check Boxes and more...
  • Extract Text, Add Text, Remove by Position, Remove Space; Create and Print Paging Subtotals; Convert Between Cells Content and Comments...
  • Super Filter (save and apply filter schemes to other sheets); Advanced Sort by month/week/day, frequency and more; Special Filter by bold, italic...
  • Combine Workbooks and WorkSheets; Merge Tables based on key columns; Split Data into Multiple Sheets; Batch Convert xls, xlsx and PDF...
  • More than 300 powerful features. Supports Office/Excel 2007-2019 and 365. Supports all languages. Easy deploying in your enterprise or organization. Full features 30-day free trial. 60-day money back guarantee.

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Excel For Mac Find And Replace Special Characters Without

  • Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
  • Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
  • Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
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