Lets say I have a legal document where the word “plaintiff” has to be changed to “defendant” in several locations. Is there a way to change this with one edit?
I wouldn’t want to do a find and replace because not all instances of “plaintiff” need to be changed to “defendant.”
Also, is there a way to add in one word or phrase in several fixed locations with one edit? Say, if I have a form document where I need to add in a date in several locations and I want to do it all at once?
Thanks.
How would you identify which locations of “plaintiff” you want changed? I don’t think any version of Word can read your mind.
I would do it this way: I would tag all the locations of plaintiff that get changed at the same time with a unique code, like “Plaintiff_group_1”, then you can search and replace that instance. You would need to remember to replace your tag with either plaintiff or dependent each time.
You can highlight a number of pages (or any contiguous section) and do a replace just within those pages. Word will ask if you want to search the rest of the document; just click no.
If the uses are scattered randomly, then you can click on Replace rather than Replace All in the search & replace box. That allows you the option of replacing an item or not. If not use Find Next to go forward.
Word has a Date Field you can insert.
I don’t use search and replace that often in Word, but in other Office products, I know you can search and replace one instance at a time (you just click “replace” and then “next” each time, rather than “replace all”) to verify before each replacement that it’s what you want.
Also, usually you can search and replace within the selection. Just select the paragraph or page you want, and only search and replace within that section.
On preview: What Exapno said.
I was hoping there would be a way to do this without creating a unique tag and using “find and replace” to replace all instances of that tag.
This might seem petty, but I wanted to avoid the effort of creating unique tags for each item I’d want replaced, and the effort of typing those tags in the “find and replace” function.
Some programs designed to draft documents for legal professionals simply ask you to type the phrase you want to appear multiple times, and the phrase appears in multiple predetermined locations. I thought there might be a way to configure Word to do the same thing.
How do you “predetermine” these locations?
Lets say you want to write a letter. You know your name will always appear at the top of the letter and at the signature line. So you can predetermine those two locations for your name in future letters.
So, when you do that, just put in the unique tags.
I don’t think there is any other way to do this in Word. You could use the Mail Merge functionality, but you will still have to tag the words that you want to have replaced.
There is a way to do this using fields. All fields with the same name can be filled with a value from somewhere else in the document. The solutions already recommended are much better for the average user, though. Getting fields to work the way you want takes a real knowledge of Word.
Where might one acquire this real knowledge of Word?
In theory, it’s all in the help files, which is where I learned most of it, along with a fair bit of trial and error. I learned a lot the summer back in the early 90’s when I put spreadsheet and mail-merge documents together for the company my father worked for, so that they could improve holiday orders, shipping, packing lists and returns.
Most people prefer some kind of instruction, so you might look for consultants who can help set it up, or continuing education courses at your local colleges.
Great. I’ll attempt to learn how to use fields, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just use find and replace.
Thanks everyone.