Terry,

I tried out your suggestion and it works. But I would rather not have the
new character in "symbol" font. Let me explain: When I use a greek symbol, I
obtain it through Insert - Symbol. When I do that, the inserted symbol
'alpha' has the same font as the rest of the text, in my case Times New
Roman. That is, when you highlight it, then go to Format - Font, you see that
it's Time New Roman. I want to keep it that way, i.e. when I replace the word
"discount" with the sign 'beta', I don't want the 'beta' to be in Symbol
font. Why do I care about that as long as the appearance is right? Because my
document has some titles, emphases, etc. in Arial. So when I highlight a text
and change that to Times New Roman or Arial, I want the 'alpha' withn the
highlighted text to remain an 'alpha'. Which I can do when I directly insert
it through Insert - Symbol, but not when I bring it in through F&R using your
method. Is there a way to retain the "Times New Roman" font of the greek
symbols in doing F&R??

"TF" wrote:

The Greek Symbols you are replacing are in a different symbol font: so the
replace text is actually using characters that don't have anything assigned
in the Symbol Font: hence the little square box. What you need to do is
click on the MORE button in the F&R dialog and from the Format list, assign
the correct font to the replace text.

--
Terry Farrell - Word MVP
http://word.mvps.org/

"Tewodaj" wrote in message
...
: Hi,
: I am using Word 2002 on Windows XP. I have been trying, so far
: unsuccessfully, to use the "Find and Replace" tool to replace greek
symbols
: with other greek symbols in my text (e.g. alpha, etc.). I have managed to
: find symbols by copying and pasting the symbol into the Find What box. But
: when I try to replace something, say the word "discount factor" with the
: symbol for 'beta' by pasting the symbol into the Replace box, "discount
: factor" instead gets replaced with a little square box. How can I address
: this problem? Is it at all adressable in Word 2002? A little warning: I've
: never written word or excel macros so am not familiar with doing my own
: programming in such applications, so I would much prefer a menu driven
: solution.