Frequently Asked Question

Microsoft Word can do a lot more things for you than you can actually know! Most people use MS-Word for very basic things. But at times you may face situations where you feel that MS-Word will not be able to help you and you will have to do it all manually. For example, what if you need to find and replace all the images in a Word document? Do you think MS-Word can do this? Well, yes! A reader of TechWelkin sent me a query. She said that she is a writer and is working on a large manuscript in MS-Word. She used a tiny image as a separator for various chapters and sections in the document. Now she wants to replace that image with a new one. But there are hundreds of copies of the image. So, will she have to replace each image one by one?

How to Find and Replace Images in MS Word
MS-Word can help in the above given scenario. There is an automatic way to find all the images in a document and then replace them all with a new image. Please note that this method will find all the images and it will replace all of them with a new one. With this method, we can not be selective about images. Here are the steps:

1. Open the MS-Word document in which replacement is to be done.
2. Insert the new image at the top of the document.
3. Select the newly inserted image and press Ctrl + C to copy it.
4. Now delete the newly inserted image.
5. Press Ctrl + H to open the Find and Replace box.
6. Put ^g in the Find what box and ^c in the Replace with box

You will see that all the images in the document will be replaced with the new image. Of course, the replacement operation will also replace the images that you did not want to replace. In such a case you may need to re-insert the images that were not to be replaced. This method is useful in a scenario where:

1. the document contains only those images that are to be replaced
2. the document contains a large number of images that need to be replaced and a smaller number of images that should not be replaced