45 min read
Text Entry & Editing
Selection, paste cleanup, Find/Replace, wildcards, and navigation for real handbook editing.
Selection is the unit of editing
Almost every edit command applies to what is selected — a word, paragraph, or the whole document.
| Goal | Professional selection |
|---|---|
| One word | Double-click word |
| One paragraph | Triple-click or click left margin |
| Entire document | Ctrl+A / Cmd+A |
| Jump to page | Ctrl+G → enter page number |
Navigation Pane (View → Navigation Pane) jumps to headings once styles exist — until then, Ctrl+G (Go To) finds pages, sections, bookmarks, and fields.
Why paste goes wrong
Clipboard carries text + formatting. Email paste often includes HTML fonts, colours, and paragraph spacing.
| Paste option | When to use |
|---|---|
| Keep Source Formatting | Importing designed content you want to keep |
| Merge Formatting | Middle ground |
| Keep Text Only | Email/plain text into styled handbook — strips foreign fonts |
| Match Destination Formatting | Adopt Normal style of target document |
Professional habit: paste welcome letter as Keep Text Only or Match Destination Formatting, then apply Normal explicitly. Fix one paragraph before pasting sixty pages of legacy policy.
Find and Replace as cleanup machinery
Ctrl+H opens Replace. Use it for:
- Principal name standardisation (Dr Helen Marsh vs Helen Marsh vs Dr. Marsh)
- Double spaces → single space
- Wrong school acronym
- Removing manual line breaks (^l manual line break → space) in imported text
Advanced Find (Ctrl+F → gear/more options): match case, whole words only, find formatting (find all 14 pt blue text to replace with Heading 2).
Replace All is destructive — Find Next first on a sample, then Replace All when pattern is correct. Save before mass replace.
Wildcards — pattern replace
Enable Use wildcards in Replace dialog.
| Wildcard | Matches |
|---|---|
| ? | Any single character |
| * | Any string |
| [0-9] | Any digit |
| ([@]) | Grouping for backreferences |
Example: Find Dr[.]? Marsh with wildcards → Replace Dr Helen Marsh — catches Dr. Marsh and Dr Marsh.
Example: Find {2,} (two spaces) → Replace single space — cleans imported policy PDF text.
Wildcards are powerful and easy to break — test on a copy of NorthgateHandbook.docx first.
Clean Helen's email paste and standardise the principal's name
Goal
Paste the welcome cleanly and standardise the principal's name document-wide.
James Okonkwo adds this to NorthgateHandbook.docx as part of one polished student handbook, policy pack, and open-day collateral before families arrive.
Paste clean
Where
Do this
You should see
- Text matches handbook body font.
Verification
Check your work
You are correct if all of these are true:
- Welcome uses handbook Normal formatting — not email blue links.
- Every principal reference reads Dr Helen Marsh consistently.
- Show/Hide ¶ shows clean single paragraph breaks — not soft line breaks everywhere.
Go To for large files
Ctrl+G → Go To tab → Page, Section, Line, Bookmark. When the handbook exceeds fifty pages, scrolling fails. Go To plus Navigation Pane (after styles) is how James Okonkwo survives Friday edits.
Select All with Ctrl+A then F9 updates fields — different tool, same keyboard discipline.
Practice
More lessons in Microsoft Word · Next: Font & Character Formatting · Previous: Creating & Managing Documents