"Search and Replace" hangs in Word 2007

[Mike Echo]

When I try a certain kind of Search and Replace in Word 2007, the program
hangs on me. The specific search and replace is the following:

SEARCH FOR: ^p^p (two carriage returns)
REPLACE WITH: ^p (one carriage return)

I can't always recreate the problem, which is maddening. However, I Googled
this symptom and found that others are having similar issues from time to
time.

Any ideas?

 

[JJ-UCF]

When I try a certain kind of Search and Replace in Word 2007, the program
hangs on me. The specific search and replace is the following:

SEARCH FOR: ^p^p (two carriage returns)
REPLACE WITH: ^p (one carriage return)

I can't always recreate the problem, which is maddening. However, I Googled
this symptom and found that others are having similar issues from time to
time.

Any ideas?

It appears to happen whenever the search string contains ^p and the
text to be found is in the document, but is not currently visible in
the document window. In other words, if you must scroll down to SEE
the text you are searching for and that text contains ^p, Word will
hang until you end task on it, or simply press ESC and it will abort
the find.