replacing a symbol

[Island Girl]

There is a character that is square which appears in some documents that come
across my desk. It looks like a small checkbox form field but it isn't.
When I copy and paste it in find and replace, it doesn't find it. In this
particular document it is preceded and followed by a pipe (I think that's
what the vertical line is called).

Is there a code that I can use in the find box that will work in this case?

 

[Butterfly Bill]

There is a character that is square which appears in some documents that come
across my desk. It looks like a small checkbox form field but it isn't.
When I copy and paste it in find and replace, it doesn't find it. In this
particular document it is preceded and followed by a pipe (I think that's
what the vertical line is called).

Is there a code that I can use in the find box that will work in this case?

It sounds like you are talking about the dummy character that Word
displays on the screen when it encounters an ASCII or ANSI number that
is not in the character set, (Press the Alt key, and keep it down
while you type 0144 then release the Alt and see if that is what you
get. 144 is such a number.). If you want a little square look in the
Wingdings or Webdings fonts.

 

[Island Girl]

Thanks, Butterfly Bill! The square about which you wrote looks exactly like
the one in question. What I need to do is replace it with an asterisk, but
nothing I type into the find and replace box works.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Thanks, Butterfly Bill! The square about which you wrote looks exactly
like the one in question. What I need to do is replace it with an asterisk,
but nothing I type into the find and replace box works.

Thanks again for your help.

For those characters that don't work when you paste them into the Find dialog, you can search for the code.

To get the code, select the character.
Then open the VBA editor (Alt+F11),
go to the immediate window (Ctrl+G).
Now type (or paste from here):

? AscW(Selection.Text)

At the end of that line, hit the Return key, and the code will appear below.

In the Find dialog, you can then type a caret (^) followed by u, then the code (say ^u0 if the code was 0, or ^u144 in the example Bill gave).

Regards,
Klaus