"Find" does not work--sometimes

[Guest]

Sometimes when I try to do a "find" in my Word document (CTRL-F), I get back
"Word has finished searching the document. The search item was not found."
This is true even for words I know are there, that I am looking at on the
screen. When this happens, it does so for whichever Word document I open.
But then the next day, it works fine, then another day not at all.
What's going on?
I'm running MSWord 2002 on WXP 2005 Media edition.
Thanks

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Make sure it wasn't searching just selected text or from the current
location to the end (though in both cases, Word will usually ask if you want
to search the rest of the document). If it has really searched the entire
document, make sure that you don't have any specific style or other
formatting applied to the "Find what" text and that you don't have any of
the boxes such as "Match case" checked.

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

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[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

If it's truly working one day, but not the next, and you've done nothing to
the document, then I would suspect that your computer memory is going bad.

On the other hand... you might check to see whether the document contains
tracked changes. If it does, then hidden tracked changes can prevent you
from seeing what's actually in the document. Perhaps those words you "know
are there" have extra bits between the letters, preventing find from
actually finding.