If you work with long or complex Microsoft Word documents, you know the frustration of finding items. The Find and Replace dialog is adequate for finding and replacing single words or two. But what if you want to find tables or multiple occurrences of a word without clicking the Find next button? Turns out there is another feature in Word 2002 and later called the select browser object control that is located on the vertical scroll bar that makes searching easier.

The Find and Replace dialog is a fairly robust tool. Yet, I find there are drawbacks to this dialog.

• The dialog implies the way to find more occurrences is to click the Find Next button.

• Even if you click the Less button to minimize the dialog, I think the dialog uses too much space. In the picture below, I need to move the dialog to get a better view of the graphic.

If you glance at the bottom of your vertical scroll bar, you'll see a small circle flanked by a pair of blue triangles. If you place your mouse over the bottom set, you'll see a tool tip that reads Next Find/GoTo to and the shortcut key (Ctrl+Page Down). A similar tool tip appears for the top set. Collectively these items represent the Select Browser Object control.

If you can't see the vertical scroll bar in Microsoft Word, you may have this feature turned off. Go to Tools | Options|View and check the box in the Show area called Vertical scroll bar.

This control allows you to easily move through your Word document looking for occurrences of various objects such as graphics, tables, footnotes, field codes and so on. The control also complements the Find and Replace dialog.

To search through your Word document for a specific word,

1. Open any multi-page Microsoft Word document.

2. Click the small circle labeled 1 below. This opens a small palette of searchable objects.

3. Click the Find icon. This is the icon with the binoculars. This will open the Find and Replace dialog.

4. In the Find what: textbox, type in your search word.

5. Click Find Next.

6. Click the close box X in the top right corner of the Find and Replace dialog.

7. Click the Next/Find button on your vertical scroll bar.

To search for other occurrences of your word, you can use these Previous and Next buttons with the triangle pairs. This option certainly allows you view your entire page. I also prefer the convenient and constant location of the controls.

Related Word Tutorial:

• Adding Graphics to Labels in Microsoft Word