Just like the AutoCorrect feature, one of the most underrated and underused features of Word is the Replace function. If you think that the Replace function is only good for changing text items, then you’re sadly mistaken. If you’ve made a mess of formating or styling your document, Replace can pretty much help you do the job. For example, you decided that using bold italics instead of just plain italics would be the best for emphasis in your document. Should you have to find all the instances in italics and also manually make them bold?

Nope. You don’t have to. The Replace option can handle formating replacements as well as text replacements. So let’s that that instance for example. You have to make all instances of italics to bold italics.

First, you have to access the Replace Menu. You can press Ctrl + H for quick access. Clicking on More will reveal just a but more features.

The logic here is simple. Place the text or formating that you want to be changed in the “Find what” field and the substitute text or format . Since we’d want to replace all instances of text italics, what we want to find would be exactly these. So to identify these. Leaving the “Find what” field blank, click on the Format drop list and select Font.

Depending on how specific your needs are (like if you only want to replace italicized text in Times New Roman), you need to select the appropriate descriptions in the Font dialog. Make sure that you select italics. Then shift your attention to the “Replace with field” and do the same proces only selecting “Bold Italic” this time.

Clicking on “Replace all” will automatically replace all instancs for italics to all bold italic font styles.