When I search for a word in a document, Find often wastes my time by locating not just that word but others that contain the same contiguous letters. Is there a better search tool?

The tool is one of the best, but I gather from your question that you don’t know how to use it. That’s not surprising, because some of its facets are not intuitive and it’s more complicated than it looks. First of all, it does more than find text; it also can find and replace words, letters, numbers, special characters and even formats, which is why its full title is Find and Replace . Press Ctrl+F to evoke the Find tab and Ctrl+H for the Replace tab.

Let’s take a closer look at this versatile tool. Notice it has a More box, which, when clicked on, toggles to a larger, more comprehensive screen with many more functions (see screenshots).

Click on More (above), and the screen expands into the below.

When you’re in the More mode, clicking on the Format or Special button evokes a drop-down menu with many search targets (see screenshot).

Click on Sounds like (English) under the Search menu to locate words you spelled phonetically; so if you typed fonetikly , it will find the misspelled word and correct it. To locate a word in all its different forms, such as ran, run, running, type ran and click on Find all word forms (English) .

If the word you’re looking for— lint, for example—contains a group of contiguous letters that are contained in other words in the document—such as splinter —and you want to filter out those other words, place a check next to Find whole words only. Only lint will be targeted.

The More mode also lets you use wildcards to represent any string of letters. For example, click on Use wildcards and use the asterisk (*) to search for a string of characters; s*d finds sad, said and started.

If you’re searching for something special, such as a graphic, click on Special for a large list of options. To search for a character that has been defined as a wildcard, type a backslash (\) before the character—\?, for example. If you’re actually searching for an asterisk, place a tilde (~) before the asterisk like this: ~*. And if you’re looking for a tilde, you guessed it: It’s a double tilde (~~).

As powerful as Find and Replace is, it can’t do a simultaneous search across multiple documents. However, several third-party programs can do that. Here are a few of them:

Word Search and Replace ( www.funduc.com/search_replace.htm ), $25.

Advanced Find and Replace ( www.abacre.com/afr ), $19.99.

MegaReplacer ( www.editorium.com/14843.htm ), $29.95.

P.S. Don’t overlook Find and Replace ’s third tab on top of the screen ( Go To ). That tool is so intuitive all you need to do is follow the screen instructions.

Why don’t computer manufacturers put an equal sign (=) in a more convenient place on keyboards? It’s such a pain to find that out-of-the-way key we use in so many Excel formulas.

The answer is simple: Keyboard designers aren’t accountants. But cheer up, here’s a simple work-around. When you enter a formula, Excel—which does know the habits of accountants—immediately recognizes that you’re writing a formula. So it lets you go to your favorite geography on the keyboard, the numeric keypad, and use its plus (+) key instead of the main keyboard’s =.

If you type +(C1+C2) and press Enter , Excel adds the requisite = and ignores the + in the calculation. Notice that both the + and the = appear in the formula bar, but Excel includes only the = in its calculation (see screenshot).

When I’m out of the office, other accountants often use my computer, which by itself doesn’t bother me. What does disturb me is that a few clicks will reveal the names of the last nine files I’ve opened, and that invades my privacy. Short of password-protecting my computer, is there some other option?

You can erase all the entries by disabling the feature before leaving the office by clicking on Tools , Options and opening the General tab. Either uncheck the box next to Recently used file list or turn the entries drop-down number to 0.

You also can censor the list with an undocumented technique for erasing any or all the file names on the list. Unfortunately, the method works only in Word.

The steps: Open any Word file and press Alt+Ctrl+- (that’s the dash key to the right of the 0 key, not the keyboard’s minus key). The mouse pointer morphs into a thick bar. Now click on File to engage a drop-down menu that shows the most recently opened files. Maneuver your pointer (which is now a thick dash) over the file name you want to remove and click on it. The entry vanishes and the mouse pointer changes back to normal.

If you decide after pressing Alt+Ctrl+- that you don’t want to delete anything, press Esc and the mouse pointer returns to normal.

Caveat : Be careful how you wield the thick dash. If you fail to press Esc or accidentally select any menu item other than the recently used files, that item is removed from the menu. Of course you can replace it by clicking on Tools , Customize and then dragging the menu item from the Commands column onto your toolbar.

Here are a few tidbits that readers might find useful:

A gem of a calculator: Microsoft quietly introduced a powerful little conversion calculator that not only adds, subtracts and divides but also converts all the major world currencies to the currency of your choice. The exchange rates are current—downloaded in real time (assuming you’re Internet-connected) from the European Central Bank. As if that’s not enough, the calculator also converts weight (for example, carats into Chinese or Taiwanese jin), length, temperature and volume. It even can function as a scientific calculator. (Sorry, it doesn’t do taxes.)

The URL for downloading the free calculator (which only works on Microsoft XP and above) is very long, so download it by doing a Google search for Microsoft Calculator Plus .

Color rows and columns in Excel: One of the nice things about columnar pads is the alternating color bars to guide the eye. Excel does the pads one better: With just a few clicks, you can highlight any row or column as a way to guide the eye along a stream of numbers. Place your cursor in any cell and press Ctrl+Space to highlight the entire column in blue, or Shift+Space to highlight an entire row in blue.

If the highlight is too dark, making it hard to read the numbers, highlight the row/column below or adjacent to the target line.

Of course, if you’re near the left edge of the screen (where the numbers are) or the top (where the letters are), just click on a number to highlight that row or a letter to highlight that column. No need to press keys.

Simple, but useful.

Password insight: A computer-password study reported in Windows Secrets ( www.windowssecrets.com ) said that, contrary to conventional wisdom, hard-to-remember passwords with a mix of 15 or so arbitrary letters and numbers are not that effective in thwarting hackers. Much better are passwords longer than 15 characters, made up of a mixture of misspelled words, such as My.Nu.Chevvy-iza-xpensive-gazguzzelrr. Add some rhyme and humor to make them easier to remember, and throw in a few numbers to further frustrate would-be hackers.

Stanley Zarowin, a former JofA senior editor, is now a contributing editor. His e-mail address is zarowin@mindspring.com .