Highlighting is a typical process in Microsoft Phrase, permitting readers to shortly discover particular phrases or phrases. If the textual content continuously happens, manually highlighting all situations could be tedious and pointless. On this article, I’ll present you two methods to focus on recurring textual content: utilizing Phrase’s “Discover and Substitute” and “Discover” choices. Each are efficient instruments for reviewing surrounding textual content moderately than making a blanket change. Each are straightforward to do — however include a couple of limitations.

I’m utilizing (desktop) Microsoft 365, however you should utilize earlier variations. You may work together with your doc or obtain the easy demonstration .docx file.

What’s the shortcut to focus on sure phrases?

The keyboard shortcut for Discover & Substitute is Ctrl + H on Home windows or Command + F on Mac.

spotlight in Phrase utilizing Discover & Substitute

To focus on in Phrase, go to the Substitute menu on the Residence bar. Utilizing the shortcut or choosing the menu will open the Discover & Substitute field. Seek for the phrase you need to spotlight within the Discover subject. Deciding on “Discover Subsequent” will spotlight the phrase within the doc.

After highlighting, you possibly can shortly peruse your doc and make updates as obligatory. The highlighting will keep in place till you take away it. You may even save the highlights.

Nevertheless, all this fast highlighting has its limits:

• In case you spotlight one other phrase or phrase — whatever the spotlight coloration you utilize — Phrase will take away the outcomes of the Spotlight All process.
• In case you take away the spotlight from any of the highlighted situations, Phrase will take away all of them.

Now, let’s do the identical factor utilizing Discover within the Navigation pane.

SEE: Microsoft Phrase typically autoformats an em sprint, however there are methods to incorporate an em sprint manually.

spotlight in Phrase utilizing Discover

There’s a couple of method to spotlight recurring textual content, and also you’ll need to be aware of each.

Completely different strategies may match relying on the model of Phrase you’re utilizing. For now, we’ll use the Discover choice, however you possibly can skip selecting a spotlight coloration as a result of Phrase will ignore the setting. The next might spotlight textual content in older variations of Phrase:

1. Click on Discover within the Modifying group or press Ctrl+F to open the Navigation pane.
2. From the textual content dropdown, select Choices, test the Spotlight All setting, and click on OK.
3. Within the textual content management, enter the chosen phrase (on this case, “video”) and press Enter. Phrase will robotically spotlight all situations.

The identical caveats apply as earlier than when attempting to work with subsequent highlighting. As well as, once you shut the Navigation pane, all highlights disappear. For that reason, I discover this selection much less versatile, however in the event you’re working within the Navigation pane for different causes, it really works nicely.

Highlighting textual content in Phrase for net

In Phrase for an internet browser, use the identical keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl + H on Home windows or Command + F on Mac) as above to open the Discover sidebar within the Navigation part. Typing a phrase or character into the search field will spotlight it within the physique of the textual content. Along with the search bar are settings that may spotlight complete phrases solely or match circumstances.

How can one simply establish and substitute duplicate phrases in a Microsoft Phrase doc?

As soon as phrases have been chosen utilizing Discover, Substitute will likely be straightforward to identify. The Substitute and Substitute All buttons sit on the backside of the Discover and Substitute menu in modern variations of the Phrase software, or beside Discover within the Navigation tab within the browser model. Insert the phrase you need to substitute the highlighted textual content with and choose Substitute to make one change or Substitute All to use the change to the whole doc.

Megan Crouse up to date this text in January 2025.