Open Find and search the document
Open Writing Tools and choose Find. Enter the text you want to locate and Compose highlights matching text in the document.
Your search terms and highlights are temporary. They are not saved into the document.
- Open Writing Tools › Find.
- Type the word or phrase you want to locate.
- Use the previous and next controls to move through the matches.
Narrow the matches when needed
Turn on Match case when capital letters matter. Turn on Whole word when you want a complete word rather than the same letters inside a longer word.
You can use both options together. Compose does not currently offer regular-expression search.
Start with the broadest search that makes sense, then add these options only when the result list contains unwanted matches. That is usually faster than trying to predict the perfect search before seeing the document results.
Replace one match at a time
Enter the replacement text, move to the match you want, then choose Replace. This is the safer choice when the same word appears in different contexts and should not always change.
Read the sentence around each match before replacing it. A terminology change that looks simple in isolation can be wrong in a quotation, title or proper name.
Use Replace all for a consistent change
Choose Replace all only when every current match should receive the same replacement. Match case and Whole word still affect which results are included.
For a terminology change across a large document, replace one match first. Use Replace all only after you are sure the search is specific enough.
After a large replacement, check several changed passages in different parts of the document. This can catch a match that followed the search rules but was wrong for that sentence.
Search across formatting without joining separate blocks
A phrase can still match when some of its letters carry different inline formatting inside the same text block. Compose does not treat unrelated paragraphs as one continuous search string.
That means formatting such as bold inside a phrase should not make an ordinary text search unexpectedly fail, while separate blocks remain separate.