Here’s the options for reaching Word’s full Find dialog quickly. Ever since Microsoft put in the Word Navigation Pane, they’ve messed up access to the Advanced Find dialog box. Ctrl + F doesn’t jump to the Word Find window anymore.
A few readers were surprised to discover that the old Find dialog had been hiding under that little arrow on the side.
Dan H. writes “You rightly mention Microsoft’s infuriating switcharoo on the familiar Ctl-F shortcut for the Find dialog–making it open the Navigation pane. I’ve learned to use the Ctrl-H shortcut (Find & Replace) instead.”
Ctrl + F used to open the Find dialog but now opens the Navigation Pane instead. There’s no shortcut to open the now-named Advanced Find dialog box with all the useful extra features.
Dan is right about the workaround, press Ctrl + H which opens the neighboring Replace dialog. Then press Alt + D to switch to the Find dialog.
It’s not as simple or fast as Ctrl + F.
Change the Shortcut
You’d think a solution would be to re-assign Ctrl + F to go to the Advanced Find dialog. After all any shortcut can be changed from Options | Customize Ribbon | Keyboard Shortcuts.
But maybe not … the VBA command for the Advanced Find dialog is FindDialog (according to Microsoft itself) but that command isn’t on the Customize Keyboard list. Instead it’s EditFind or EditReplace.
See Found! Word shortcut to the Advanced Find dialog
Any way you look at it, Microsoft really didn’t think through the consequences of changing the destination of the simple Ctrl + F shortcut.
The Alt key shortcut for Advanced Find
There’s an Alt … keyboard shortcut to reach the Advanced Find dialog. After all, at Home | Editing (way off at the right of the ribbon) so there should be Alt key sequence to reach it.
It’s Alt, H, FD, A or press Alt (don’t hold down) then type H F D A (upper or lower case). There are little tags to show what’s available to type next.
Ctrl + G almost gets there
Office Watcher, Brian M has another suggestion. Ctrl + g/G jumps to the Go To tab – which is on the same dialog box as Replace.
From there, switch to the Replace tab in three different ways:
- Click on the Replace tab (obviously) OR
- Press Alt + d (for Find) or Alt + p (Replace) OR
- Ctrl + PageUp or PageDown – press several times to cycle through the tabs.
Found! Word shortcut to the Advanced Find dialog
Excel’s Find All tricks for Windows and Mac
Play “Find the mouse pointer” in Windows 11 and Windows 10
Word Advanced Find – all the special codes
Wildcard Find tricks in Microsoft Word
