How to use Find and Replace like I used to...

[RobG]

I used to be able to bring up the find and replace dialog, then paste
whatever I wanted to replace into the find field. This was really
useful as often pasted content included special characters that
display as a box, so I could just copy, paste and replace them with a
space or whatever.

Now in Word:mac 2011 the dialog attaches itself to the left margin
(really annoying, I much preferred being able to put it where I want
it) and when I paste into the find field, it pastes into the document
instead. This makes it really hard to replace special characters from
paste operations.

What is the new way to do this?

Ah ha!!

While writing this I discovered "Advanced Find and Replace..." hidden
as the last option in a list behind a sprocket–like button, which
seems to be simply the old find and replace dialogue. Why did they
decide to hide it and replace it with a far less useful widget (or
whatever it's called)?

Now to do Find and replace, I have to either:

1. click Edit
2. click
3. click Replace...,
4. click the sprocket
5. click Advanced find and replace

or

1. press Cmd+shift+H
2. click the sprocket
3. click Advanced find and replace

and if I dismiss the (redundant) find widget from the left margin, I
lose the find and replace dialogue too. Who makes these crazy
decisions? Why must I have two find and replace dialogs on the screen
at once?

I suppose I'll write another macro and map it to a key combination so
I get back functionality that was available for decades but has now
been hidden.

Why does the Word development team keep making things that were simple
hard?

 

[Patty Winter]

I hate the new Find & Replace interface, too.

When I type Cmd-Shift-H, I get the old dialog box. I think that's
because I defined that keystroke sequence for EditFindDialog in
the keyboard preferences. I still have to click the Advanced tab,
but at least now I'm starting from the dialog box I want.


Patty