Find and Find & Replace

[Guest]

In Word 2003, whenever I click on find or find and replace, the default
options are to search up and to match case. How do I change the default to,
e.g., search all, with no other parameters?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Word ordinarily defaults to the last-used settings, but neither of those you
mention is the default, so neither should be in effect when you first start
Word. Find/Replace will default to "Search Down" if text is selected;
otherwise it starts at the insertion point, searches to the bottom, then
returns to the top and searches to the insertion point.

If Search Down and Match Case are enabled in a fresh (just started) instance
of Word, with no text selected, then something is wrong.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Guest]

I agree something is wrong. I use Office XP at home, and it behaves as you
describe. I use Office 2003 at work, and it acts as I described previously,
always defaulting to search down, and match case, and I never highlight text
before executing find or find & replace. Any suggestions for fixing the
wrong? I suppose I should just call one of our IT guys and ask for a reload
of Office.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you use Word as your email editor in Outlook, it's possible Outlook could
be implicated. Otherwise, the most likely culprit whenever anything
mysterious goes wrong in Word is a poorly written add-in.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Jay Freedman]

Hi Van,

Please don't ask to have Office reloaded -- it's a huge waste of time
and probably won't fix the problem. The difficulty is that a standard
uninstall/reinstall cycle doesn't remove the parts of Office that
store customizations (templates and registry keys). This is done by
design, so that you don't lose the customizations you want. When
you're dealing with a customization gone wrong, though, a reinstall
doesn't help.

Instead, see
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/DataKeySettings.htm for the
procedure to wipe the specific registry key that Word uses. (I'm
fairly sure the Find/Replace settings are in there, although the
article doesn't list them.) Be sure to back up the key first, as
described under "How to preserve your Settings preferences", so you
can restore it in case I'm wrong.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?VmFu?=,

I use Office XP at home, and it behaves as you
describe. I use Office 2003 at work, and it acts as I described previously,
always defaulting to search down, and match case, and I never highlight text
before executing find or find & replace.

If you have a macro tool installed that's running instead of Word's built-in
Find/Replace this could be causing the problem. Or, if some macro is running
when you start Word, and it uses Find/Replace in a certain way (the "wrong"
way), the settings used in the macro will be retained when you open the
Find/Replace dialog box later.

if you hold down CTRL when starting Word 2003, to force it into Safe Mode, do
you see the "true" default settings?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[Guest]

Cindy,

Yes, when I started in Safe Mode, the find and replace functions returned to
their normal, well-behaved default settings, i.e., "all," with none of the
boxes checked.

How do I hunt down the offending macro?

Thanks.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?VmFu?=,

Yes, when I started in Safe Mode, the find and replace functions returned to
their normal, well-behaved default settings, i.e., "all," with none of the
boxes checked.

How do I hunt down the offending macro?

The first thing is to check your Normal.dot for a macro named AutoExec. If you find
one, see if it contains .Find in it, anywhere. You might also want to check for
AutoNew macros, and in the ThisDocument module for the Document_New event.

Then quit Word and check the Word startup folder (by default, this will be under
C:\Documents and Setting\[Your profile name]\Application
Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP. If you don't find it (or anything in it) there, check
in Word's Tools/Options/file locations if it's been assigned to a different folder,
then look there.

You can open any *.dot files and check them for AutoExec macros.

For anything else you find, try dragging it to another folder, then start Word and
see if the problem has stopped. If it has, quit Word and drag one of the files back
in. Repeat until you've isolated the culprit.

If that still hasn't gotten rid of it, the problem is likely in a COM-Addin. For
COM-Addins installed only for your profile, you can see and manage them with a
command you can put in the Tools menu. Go to Tools/Customize/Commands and select
the "Tools" category. Drag the entry COM Add-ins to your Tools menu. OK.

That would leave COM Add-ins installed for the entire machine. These can only be
tracked down by going into the Registry. See

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en;307479

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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