How To Use Find, Replace Without Capitalization

A subscriber contacted me recently and asked if they could replace an all-caps abbreviation/acronym (ie., NAACP) with another word without all caps. They said every time they used Find and Replace it was all caps and wanted to know if there was any magic fix for this.

Well, luckily for my subscriber, it turns out that there is a magic fix and it is very quick and easy to boot!

Follow the steps below to learn how:

1. Always, always save your document first before making any changes. This is a golden rule. Please abide by it and it will save you lots and lots of misery.
2. Turn off Track Changes.
3. Press Ctrl + H to open Find and Replace.
4. Click More.
5. In Find, click NAACP (or whatever abbreviation you need to change).
6. Select Match Case AND Find Whole Words Only.
7. In Replace, key in the word you would like to replace your abbreviation with.
8. Click Find Next.
9. Click Replace.
10. Check to see if this indeed accomplished what you wanted.
11. If it did, then you can safely click Replace All.

There is one caveat…

Match case and Find whole words only will remain as default filters for any searches you may execute in the future while your Word document is open.

To avoid any problems, it would be best if you go back and turn off those filters once you are finished. If not, your standard Ctrl + F searches will apply those filters, too.

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