Master Word Wildcards with a Live Tester
Unlock the full power of Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace with wildcards. Wildcards allow you to build complex search patterns to find and modify text with precision. Whether you need to find all words that start with pre, locate four‑digit numbers, or reformat dates across a document, wildcards can save hours of manual work.
Use this live tester as a safe sandbox to build and perfect your wildcard patterns in real time—before you run them on important documents. For step‑by‑step fixes and pro tips, see our guides on Microsoft Word, including Macros & VBA, Document Formatting, and Word Shortcuts.
Live Word Wildcard (RegEx) Tester
Type a Word wildcard pattern and see real-time matches on your sample text.
Common Word Wildcards Cheat Sheet
| Wildcard | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
? | Matches any single character | d?g → "dig", "dog", "dug" |
* | Matches any string of characters | s*d → "sad", "started", "stood" |
< > | Marks the beginning and end of a word | |
[ ] | Matches one of the specified characters | b[aeiou]t → "bat", "bet", "bit", "bot", "but" |
[-] | Range inside a character class | [a-c] → a/b/c; [0-9] → any digit |
{n} | Exactly n occurrences | fe{2}d → "feed" |
{n,} | n or more occurrences | fe{1,}d → "fed", "feed" |
@ | One or more of previous element | fe@d ≈ fe{1,}d |
FAQ
How do I enable wildcards in Word’s Find and Replace?
Open Find and Replace (Ctrl+H) → click More → check Use wildcards. Now your pattern will be interpreted using Word’s wildcard rules.
What’s the difference between ? and * in Word wildcards?
? matches a single character, while * matches any number of characters (including none). For example, d?g matches “dig/dog/dug” and pre* matches “pre”, “press”, “prevent”, etc.Can I use this tester for JavaScript or Python regex?
This tool focuses on Word’s wildcard flavor. Many concepts overlap with regex, but syntax differs. For JavaScript/Python, use a regex‑specific tester.