Janet Miles

I just tracked this down for a friend, and wanted to share it with everyone.

Suppose you have a Word document and you want to do a search and replace, but what you want to insert is a special character not found on the keyboard (like ½ instead of 1/2). Here's what you do:

1. Type the desired symbol, either by using the Ribbon to Insert | Symbol and selecting it from the dialog box, or by typing the alt code if you know it (e.g., alt-171 for ½).
   
2. Highlight the symbol and press ctrl-c to copy
   
3. Press ctrl-h to bring up the Search-and-Replace dialog box
   
4. Type your existing text (the text you want to change), in this case ½, in the Search area
   
5. Type ^c (caret-c) in the Replace area
   
6. Either Replace | Find | Replace until done, or Replace All

Even easier, if you can find the relevant alt code for the character, you can just type that into the search or the replace box.

Is very snazzy.