The “Find what” string finds a single number (one through nine, in the first group), followed by any two numbers (in the second group), followed by a hyphen, followed by any two numbers (in the third group). So what’s the deal with the ) Replace with:
In Word’s “Find what” box, type a single space. Use a wildcard search in the Open and Replace dialog (Crtl-H), clicking More and check Use wildcards.Display Word’s “Replace” dialog by pressing CTRL + h on your keyboard.But there is a better solution: Use wildcards. In that case, you’ll need to hit “Replace all” multiple times to clean up the problem. Or, worse, the professor has used multiple spaces to indent paragraphs or do other kinds of formatting. Unless, as often happens, old Professor Griggs has been sloppy and sometimes used three spaces in a row. Replace one or more characters in the criteria with a wildcard character. In the Criteria row of the field that you want to use, type the operator Like in front of your criteria. Turning two spaces into one is easy enough: just put two spaces in Microsoft Word’s “Find what” box, one space in the “Replace with” box, and hit the “Replace all” button. To use a wildcard character within a pattern: Open your query in Design view. Those of us who learned to type on an actual typewriter were taught to put two spaces between each sentence, supposedly to help with readability, and there are still plenty of academics who cling to that outmoded practice. Wildcard Search #1: Replacing Double Spaces In fact, I’m going to give you seven easy wildcard searches you can use right now to help clean up that manuscript and beat that deadline. Using wildcards is not as hard as you might think.
If only you knew how to use wildcard find and replace! But now that deadline is looming, and there’s still a lot of work ahead.
Your anguished cry rings out in the middle of the night: “Why, oh why, did I accept this stupid freelance job?” You know the answer: The client offered you twice as much money as you’d ordinarily get for a job like this because the deadline is tight.