How to do search and replace involving fields in Microsoft Word?

Question

I have a Word document with fields of the reference variety, which occur in the form "[field].[field]"--in other words, there's a period between the two fields. I want to globally replace this with a space.

Word offers the ^d special character to search for fields, but for some reason the query "^d.^d" does not find anything. However, ".^d" does. Now comes the problem, however--what do I specify as the replacement text in order to retain the field code? If using regular expressions, I could use a "Find What Expression" such as \1, but with regexp ("wild card") mode the ^d is not permitted.

I guess I could write a macro...

Answer 1

I would like to add to Bibadia's solution.

An example of an index entry field; we want to change a name we misspelled.

• Make sure hidden formatting is displayed (toggle with SHIFT+CTRL+F8).

• Make sure wildcards option is not selected. To search for fields, use the opening and closing field braces code (optionally use ^w for spaces, as Bibadia suggested):

  ^19 XE "Deo, John" ^21

• Replace won't recognize field braces character, but will allow to insert the clipboard's content. ;). To do that, insert in text the correct entry. CTRL+F9 to insert field and type:

  XE "Doe, John"

• Select the field above and copy

• Use

  ^c

  in the replace box

• Hit Replace All

Ta-da!