Find can find a string, but not Replace.

[mmosbey]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I have Office 2008. No updates are currently available.

I performed a case-specific Find and Replace option, replacing every instance of a generic word that is capitalized with a lowercase version.

That generic word is also part of a proper business name, so I attempted to perform a Find and Replace for the full, three-word business name. When I do this, Find and Replace reports no instances found.

Later, proofreading, I found several instances. I copied the text into the Find field of Find and Replace, and no instances were found.

If I click the Find button to switch the dialog to Find mode (from Find and Replace mode), my query remains in the search box, and 32 instances are found.

All searches, in Find or Find and Replace were performed with case sensitivity enabled.

I'm going to try to find a Windows machine with Word 2007 this morning, but for future reference, what's going on here, and how do I get around it?

 

[mmosbey]

Update: I did find a Windows 7 machine with Office 2007. I'm seeing the same behavior.

 

[mmosbey]

Additonal update: I had change tracking enabled. Approving all changes allowed Find and Replace to work as expected. Can't believe this is by design, but it was a workaround.

 

[macropod]

Hi mmosbey,

If the string spans a tracked change it may not be found and, of course, if the string is changed, the old one becomes a deleted
change - which you can't further change via Find/Replace.

 

[CyberTaz]

That's not a 'workaround', it's the solution Track Changes is a far too
complex mechanism to use as a continuously working tool. There are a number
of aspects of Word which seemingly "work" while TC is active but either
don't work as expected or result in document corruption.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac