Why does find and replace not work

Unless the formatting is necessary for what you are trying to do. Is Track Changes turned on? Some functions using wildcards don't work as expected if Track Changes is on. Did you spell the Find What and Replace With text correctly? Are there special characters in what you are looking for? If so, you'll want to make sure you enter the special characters properly. Are the search modifiers match case and whole word selected properly?

Author Bio. Ignoring Selected Words when Sorting If you use Excel to maintain a list of text strings such as movie, book, or product titles , you may want the program to Discover More. Removing Entire Paragraphs from Your Document If you need to get rid of a lot of paragraphs in a document, it's easy to do as long as the document relies on styles for Turning Off the Clipboard Icon When you paste information into a document, Word normally displays a small icon to the right of what you pasted.

More WordTips ribbon. Using Search Text in the Replacement When you use the Find and Replace tool in Word, you may want to include what you searched for in the replacement text. Changing the Position of the Dollar Sign When you receive documents created by others, it is not unusual that you'll want to edit what they've written. Hide my email address. What is eight minus 1? This Site. Newest Tips. Links and Sharing. Reason: wrong forum. Sorry, I see this question is in the Work forum I need to post to Excel forum.

I'm new here. Originally Posted by aslipher. Thread Tools. Other Forums: Access Forums. All times are GMT The time now is PM. Contact Us - Privacy Statement - Top. User Name. Remember Me? Mark Forums Read. Brigitte Novice. Join Date: Mar Posts: 2. View Public Profile. Special Characters? Many times they are at the end. I actually cheated a bit and just clicked on the cell and pasted the contents into the "find" line and then it found the number that I needed.

The "extra stuff" doesn't matter for the other analysis I:m doing but I imagine that somewhere down the road, it might. You must log in or register to reply here. Similar threads D. Replies 8 Views Oct 1, Fluff. Question Replacing Values. Replies 7 Views TheCobbler Aug 21, Excel Questions. Replies 6 Views Aug 22, TheCobbler. This then raised the error warning you described. Either remove the format part or check that the cells match specification.

Have just tried it again on a text column in the original sheet, and I still get the error. Also tried it in the sanitized version, and I still get the error. Does this mean I have a setting somewhere that is causing the problem? It did - and still I have the error. As with the others your test file worked. I assume if you remove the formatting part it works for you? If so we need to know what formats you applied. The test I just did was to go to another column with the default formatting and to search for the word "Completed" which is clearly visible in many of the cells.

Although the "options" are minimised, they are all set to default. Is there anything else I can provide? Attached Images find completed. Can you share a cut down version of the real file offline? I'm going to close down, reopen, double check and try it again first! If it's working for you it must be something in my settings or something I'm doing, so will go through everything locally first. If I still get the error then yes please, I'll send through a version!

I closed everything and shut down Excel. So I opened this one again I don't get it, however I accept I must have unwittingly changed a setting that affected the search and therefore "resetting" Excel has done the trick.

Thanks very much for all your help and time, it's hugely appreciated.