MS Word 2010 - keyboard shortcut for replace that uses selected text

Question

When I use Ctrl+F my selected text is put into the find side panel, but I need to do extra mouse steps to do a replace.

When I do Ctrl+H I get a replace dialog box, but it ignores my selected text.

Is there a way to have a keyboard shortcut that opens a replace box directly, putting selected text into the find field?

Answer 1

You can press Ctrl+C, Ctrl+H, Ctrl+V to get your desired effect, but if even that's too much then you can make a macro to do it all in one go.

Perhaps map it to the unused Ctrl+Alt+H key combination.

Sub QuickReplace()
 Selection.Copy
 Dim DataObj As MSForms.DataObject
 Set DataObj = New MSForms.DataObject
 DataObj.GetFromClipboard
 Selection.Find.Text = DataObj.GetText
 Dialogs(wdDialogEditReplace).Show
End Sub

If you receive a "User-defined type not defined" you are missing the reference to Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library. If its not listed, add C:\Windows\System32\FM20.dll or C:\Windows\FM20.dll as a reference.

Answer 2

Is there a way to have a keyboard shortcut that opens a replace box directly, putting selected text into the find field?

That's the default behaviour with Word 2013 when you hit Ctrl+H.

Perhaps this is of interest to you even though you explicitly mentioned Word 2010.

• Mark Kosmowski: Is there a way to set this as the default behavior in Word 2010?
• Lernkurve: @MarkKosmowski: Not that I know of.
• Lernkurve: @MarkKosmowski Didn't the macro solution work for you? Another solution would be to install AutoHotkey and to write a script which would intercept Ctrl+H and do what you want. I could try writing a script if that was a viable solution and see whether it works at all.