Page 214 - Excel Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

42_574272 ch37.qxd 10/1/04 10:55 PM Page 199
37 Editing with Search
& Replace and

Spell Check
Technique

o discussion of spreadsheet editing is complete without including
Save Time By something on the Find and Replace and Spell Check features in
NExcel. You can use the Find and Replace feature to quickly locate
Making more global edit-
ing changes with Find every occurrence of a specific string (a series of characters) in a work-
and Replace sheet and then have Excel actually update the cells that it finds with new
text or numbers. This feature is a real timesaver when you need to make
Eliminating typos with a global change that affects cells in diverse parts of the spreadsheet.
Spell Check
Excel’s Spell Check feature is a real godsend if you’re like me and are not
Creating custom diction-
aries for Spell Check the best (that is, most accurate) typist in the world. Spell checking a
worksheet can go a long way towards eliminating typos that get by the
program’s AutoCorrect feature. (See Technique 11.) The only problem
with using Spell Check is that many spreadsheets are crammed full of
acronyms, technical terms, and formal names that Excel’s spelling dic-
tionary has never heard of. To prevent the spell checker from really slow-
ing you down by stopping at every other word in the spreadsheet to ask
if it’s misspelled, you need to build custom dictionaries that contain most
of these erstwhile unknown terms.

Using Find and Replace

Excel’s Find and Replace feature enables you to easily update the con-
tents of a single worksheet or all the worksheets in a workbook on either
a case-by-case basis or globally. To make quick and easy editing changes
with this feature, follow these steps:

1. To perform a search and replace through the entire worksheet,
select a single cell. To restrict the search-and-replace operation to a
specific cell range or nonadjacent selection, select all the cells to be
edited.
2. Choose Edit➪Replace or press Ctrl+H to open the Find and Replace
dialog box. (See Figure 37-1.)