how do I find and replace within a selection in Excel 2007?

[geoff]

I'm used to doing this without a thought in earlier versions of Excel, but I
was recently upgraded to 2007, and I can't for the life of me figure it out.
every time I do a replace all with a group of cells selected, it replaces all
in the entire worksheet.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I bet you're clicking the "Find All" button first (to verify what cells should
be changed before the actual change).

When you do that, you're changing the selection to just a single cell. Move
that dialog box if you can't see the current selection.

You'll want to stop verifying or you'll want to reselect the range to change
before you do the actual replace.

 

[geoff]

Thanks, Dave. That wasn't exactly the problem, but it made me realize what
was. I would select the cells, then ctrl-H to find and replace. when that
dialog came up, the options were visible and "Within: workbook" was selected,
as that's how I usually search these giant spreadsheets. When I changed that
to "Sheet" it worked. This is a change from the previous version I was
using, so not exactly obvious, at least not to me.

and, as an aside, I find it incredibly annoying that MS would take what
should be the bedrock of all work-related software and make random, pointless
changes like that. and don't get me started with the menus. Seriously, in
one of the two pieces of software that everyone in the office-working world
uses, why on earth would you change every single menu, remove the Format
menu, remove Insert rows from the insert tab, etc. list goes on and on.
Moronic! Anyway, sorry for the rant, and thanks for the tip.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Well, I hope you're feeling better with that off your chest <vbg>.

 

[geoff]

actually, I do, thanks

Well, I hope you're feeling better with that off your chest <vbg>.