Use the Microsoft Word Replace feature to invert the words in the column

Network Administration - While working with Word documents, there was a time when you wanted to find a way to reverse the position of words in the same column.

For example, you have a list of names listed in the format. Now you want to change it back to Name first. So is there any way to do this besides re-entering each name? The following article will show you how to use the Microsoft Word Replace feature to reverse the position of the words in the column.

In order to reverse the position of a series of words in the same column or list, you do the following:

1. Select the column or list you want to make a change.
2. From the Edit menu, select Replace for Word 2003 version. Or click Replace in the Editing group on the Home tab for Word 2007 or later versions. A simpler way is to press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + H.
3. Click the More button and check the Use Wildcards option. Note, this is the most important step.
4. In the Find What box, enter (<*>) (<*>) Notice between two parentheses with spaces.
5. In the Replace With box, enter 2 1 Note the space immediately after the number 2.
6. Click Replace All .
7. When Word asks if you want to expand across the document, select No.

Explain

In the above trick, we used Wildcard to represent the characters. Wildcard includes a ? and * . Sign ? represents any one character. The * sign represents any number of characters. Specifically in the above case:

() : Actual parentheses are not wildcards. They work to divide the sample phrase into logical strings.
<> : The curly brackets work to mark the beginning and end of a word or phrase.
* : Wildcard replaces any number of characters, here is Full Name.
: Seal the backslash with the numerals representing the sequence of characters in angle brackets above.

Thus, Find What box divides the names into two separate strings. Replace With cell proceeds to replace the first character string with the second string and vice versa.

With Wildcard tricks, just be a little flexible, you can completely position the words in the column or list as you want, not simply reversing the position of First and Last names.