Millions of people use Become daily, both personally and professionally. However, there are many functions of this program that are unknown and barely used. In this post we are going to talk about one of them. Keep reading and Learn how to use the Microsoft Word search engine.
This is a very useful function when dealing with especially long documents. Sometimes we find ourselves having to search for a specific word. Doing it manually would be a long and tedious job. Fortunately, we have this valuable resource. Below we explain in detail in this short tutorial how to use it.
Search within the document
Microsoft Word offers us the possibility of searching for words within a document, a method that allows us to work much more efficiently and quickly. When we work with texts that are not too long, perhaps one or two pages, it can seem like a rather dispensable resource. However, when we have to search longer documents, it is revealed as a function that can save us a lot of time and effort.
Let's see what needs to be done to use this function:
- First of all, we have to open the Word document in which we want to perform the search.
- Then we go to the program's tools menu, shown at the top, and click on the option "Look for".
- In the small menu that opens on the left side of the screen, We enter the word we want to search for within the document.
- The search engine places us in the first location of the text where said word is found. This is shown highlighted with a yellow background.
This simple search method can be used as many times as needed. It works very quickly, since it only takes a few seconds. It is especially interesting when dealing with documents that are very long.
Search with voice
Even more convenient is to use the Microsoft Word voice search engine, a possibility that has been implemented relatively recently. Obviously, to do this you must first have the microphone activated. This is what we should do:
- With the Word document open, we select the microphone button located in the right corner of the search box (can also be done using the Alt+Q key combination).
- We wait a few seconds until the text box that opens shows the status of "Listening". A small sound will alert us that we can now talk.
- We say out loud the word or words we want to search for, in the most expensive way possible.
- This will appear written in the search box. If it is correct, we select it by clicking with the mouse.
- When the search ends, we receive a new acoustic warning and all the matches in the text are shown.
Change the format to single words
Sometimes we have the need to modify a specific word within a text because it has not been written correctly. This is quite common when we integrate technicalities or words from other languages that we do not handle well into the text. Let's imagine this example: a long text in which, by mistake, we have entered a misspelled word X times.
Going through the text looking for this word and correcting it is slow and inefficient work. Depending on the volume of the document, it can even be exhausting. Luckily, there is a function that will be of great help to us: changing the format to single words, with which you can make the modifications simultaneously following these simple steps:
- To begin with, we search and select the word that we want to modify in the text. It is best to choose the one that appears for the first time in the document.
- By holding down the Control key, we advance through the text and select the rest.
- Once everything is selected, you just have to enter the correction, which will be applied to all the selected fragments.
This method is not only used to make corrections, but also to change the formatting of the text (size, font type, bold, italics, etc.). What we need in each case.
Searches through Bing
Word has very interesting online functions that, due to ignorance, we often do not take advantage of well. One of them is the possibility of searching using selected terms. through the Bing search engine. For those who don't know yet, Bing is Microsoft's answer to Google's search engine. Its search engine is used by about 3% of global Internet users.
Applied to Word, it is a very effective resource when we are writing a text and we need to expand the information or look for a specific detail to enrich or improve the content. The way to access this search engine is very simple. This is what needs to be done:
- First we select the word or words of which we wish to obtain more information.
- then we do right click mouse.
- In the menu that appears on the screen, we choose the option «Smart search».
- With this, a box opens on the right side of the screen showing all the results.