There are several ways of changing many words at once in Microsoft Word. The same is true of the reasons for making this type of edit. A personnel change in your work team may provide one reason. A report mentioning John Doe as your company's CEO is no longer accurate, for example. All occurrences of that name have to be changed. Since changing many words at once is a powerful ability of Word, use it with caution. Specifically, proofread your document thoroughly once you've made multi-word changes.
Step 1
Open an existing Word document and press "Control" and "H" keys simultaneously. Word will display the "Find and Replace" dialog box. Replacing one word with another is one way of changing multiple words in Word.
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Step 2
Type in the "Find" text box any text that you'd like to replace. Type in the "Replace" text box the replacement text you'd like to appear in place of the found text. For example, if you want to change "John Doe" to "Clark Kent," type "John Doe" in the "Find" text box and "Clark Kent" in the "Replace" text box.
Step 3
Click the "More" button, then click the "Find whole words" and "Match case" checkboxes. Perform this step only if you require that the text Word finds matches exactly what you specify.
Step 4
Click the "Replace all" button to replace all instances of the found text with the replacement text.
Step 5
Click the "Close" button to close the Find-Replace dialog box.
Step 6
Press "Control-H" again to re-display the Find-Replace dialog box. Type in the "Find" text box a new word whose formatting you'd like to change.
Step 7
Click in the "Replace" text box, but don't type anything. If you do, Word will change the text and the formatting of the text you're searching for.
Step 8
Click the "More" button to expose more options for replacing text, then click the "Format" button. Word will display a small menu of different type of formatting you can change.
Step 9
Click the "Font" menu item, then click the "Bold" item of the "Font style" box. This tells Word you want to make bold all occurrences of the text you're searching for.
Step 10
Click "OK" to close the font dialog box, then click the "Replace All" button to make all occurrences of the text you're seeking bold.
Step 11
Click the "Close" button to close the Find-Replace dialog box.
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