Quick answer: Open the Word document, press Ctrl+F on Windows (or Command+F on Mac), and type the word or phrase in the Navigation pane. Select a result to jump to it. You can also choose Home > Find. Type a phrase normally; quotation marks are not needed for a basic phrase search.
Find a word or phrase
- Open the document and press Ctrl+F, or select Home > Find.
- Type the text you want in the Navigation pane’s search box. Word shows matching places as you type.
- Select a result, or use the next and previous controls, to move among matches.
- Clear the search or close the pane when you are done.
The colored matches shown during a search are temporary navigation highlights. They do not apply permanent highlighting or change the document’s text.
Make the search more precise
Use the search options for Match case when capitalization matters, or Whole words only when a short term should not match part of a longer word. The available controls differ between desktop Word and Word for the web. In Word for the web, use the filter icon in the Navigation pane for these options.
For a phrase, type the words together in the order they appear. Putting quotation marks in a basic Find search is unnecessary and can lead to confusing results. If you need to change every match, use Replace (often Ctrl+H) and review the replacements before applying them all. See our Find and Replace guide.
Choose a search option for the question
- Exact capitalization: Turn on Match case when “US” should be different from “us.”
- Whole term: Turn on Whole words only when searching for “art” should not also find part of a longer word.
- Text plus formatting or a special character: In desktop Word, open the Navigation pane’s search settings and choose Advanced Find & Replace. The expanded dialog can search formatting, paragraph marks, or other special items that a basic phrase search cannot describe easily; see Microsoft’s advanced Find instructions.
Clear any precision options before a new search; a forgotten Match case or Whole words setting can make a common word appear missing. Search results take you to the text but do not select it for a permanent edit. To change occurrences, use Replace and review the matches one at a time when context matters.
Find a word in Word on a phone or tablet
The Word mobile app has no Ctrl+F shortcut, but the Find tool is one tap away.
- Open the document in the Word app.
- On iPhone or iPad, tap the magnifying glass icon in the upper-right corner and choose Find. On Android, tap More Options (the three dots) and then the Find magnifying glass.
- Type the word or phrase. Word shows how many matches it found.
- Use the up and down (or left and right) arrows to move from one match to the next.
The search options include Match Case and Whole Words, just like the desktop version.
Search for a word outside a Word document
Ctrl+F (Command+F on a Mac) also opens a find bar in web browsers, PDF readers, email apps, and Excel. Type the word, then press Enter to jump through the matches.
To find which of several documents contains a word, type the word in the search box of File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) while viewing the folder that holds the files. Both can search the text inside indexed Word documents, not only file names. Then open the file and use Find to reach the exact spot.
If the visible word still cannot be found
The word may be part of a screenshot or scanned page rather than Word text. Word’s ordinary Find cannot match letters that exist only as image pixels. For that case, extract the text with OCR and proofread it; see our image-text guide. If the content is ordinary text, copy a short distinctive segment from the document into Find to rule out a spelling or punctuation difference.
If Word finds no matches
- Check spelling, punctuation, spaces, and whether Match case or Whole words only is limiting results.
- Try a shorter distinctive phrase if the document uses different punctuation.
- Make sure you are searching the document you intended to open. Text embedded in a picture is not ordinary editable document text.
Microsoft’s guides: Use the Navigation pane in Word and Find text in Word for the web.
Matt has been writing about Microsoft Windows and other Microsoft products since the days of Windows XP. He spends much of his time writing for sites like WindowBrain.com