More Please...Part 4

In the last post, I said we would talk about the Special drop-down list. I use options on this drop-down when I'm troubleshooting.

For example, in a long document, I want to look at every place that I've enter a manual page break (Ctrl + Enter) and consider replacing it with a section break. It's easy to put in the wrong type of break in the heat of the moment.

1. I don't enter any text in the Find field; however, I do click in the field and select the Manual Page Break option from the Special drop-down list.
2. I don't enter any text in the Replace field; however, I do click in the field and select the Section Break option from the Special drop-down list. Word is going to assume that it should pick the section break you set up in Page Setup dialog on the Layout tab and in the field Section start.
3. I then click the Find Next button to go to the first instance. I decide whether to replace the manual page break or no.  I click Replace (or not), and then I click the Find Next button to move to the next instance.

Special Button


Hyphens
Another instance when this drop-down is helpful is searching for hyphens. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate is a hot topic for lots of people. Some people refuse to use them while others just love them. The one place where they are necessary is in a phrase like mother-in-law. It's a phrase that is intended to be treated as one word and the hyphens cause it to be one word. The problem comes in when one of the hyphens happens to be at the end of a line and the rest of the phrase wraps to the next line. If this sounds familar, I've talked about this before in the post Using Non-Breaking Characters.

The Special drop-down on the Replace dialog comes into the discussion when you need to know exactly what you've done with the hyphens in your document. When I look for this sort of info:

• I leave the Find field empty, but click in the field and pick Optional Hyphen from the Special drop-down.  
• I leave the Replace field empty, but click in the field and pick Nonbreaking Hyphen from the Special drop-down.
• I click the Find Next button to go to the first instance. I decide wether to replace the hyphen or no. I click the Replace button (or not), and then I click the Find Next button to continue.

As you can see from this post, the Special drop-down options have limited use. However, when you're finalizing an important document--like a book--knowing where to find these types of options can make you work more efficiently.

No Formatting Button
Word remembers many of the formatting commands that you add from the More area of the dialog. When you start a subsequent search, you can get frustratate if you happen not to remember to remove the formatting commands. It's worth click the Not Formatting button to clear the decks before you start a new find or replace operation.