How do I find a specific word in a document?

Last reviewed: October 7, 2026 · Markdown version

Use the Find command of the app the document is open in. On a computer that is usually Ctrl+F (⌘+F on a Mac); in Word on a phone it sits behind a search or More button, and in Pages for iPhone it is More, then Find. Type the word and each match is marked in turn. What differs between editors is how strict the match can be made, and whether a word that appears only inside a picture or a scanned page can be found at all. Of the four editors below, one says outright that its search reads scanned pages; the last section sets out where each stands.

Microsoft Word

On a computer. Microsoft's page on finding text says to press Ctrl + F, "or select Home > Find", which opens the Navigation pane; you then type into its "Search in document" box, and can narrow the results to "Match case" or "Whole words only" (Find text in a document, Microsoft Support, read 7 October 2026).

On a phone. In Word for iPhone you tap Search in the upper-right corner and select Find; in Word for Android, Microsoft says to tap "⋮ More Options" and select Find. Either way, once you have typed the word, "you'll see a numerical indicator in the search box of how many times that word or phrase occurs", and arrows step through the matches. The options include Match Case, Whole Words, and "Sounds like", which Microsoft says "finds all words that sound similar to the query", giving caught and cot as its example; on Android that option is marked as English only (Find text in an Office file on a mobile device, Microsoft Support, read 7 October 2026). That count is the quickest way to answer "is this word in here at all, and how often?"

Google Docs

Google's help page gives two routes on a computer. The shortcut: "You can also search within a file using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + f (⌘ + f on a Mac)". The fuller one is Edit, then Find and replace, where you type the word next to "Find" and click Next or Prev to move between uses. Two options narrow it: "Match case", and "Match using regular expressions", which Google says "matches words based on regular expressions" (Search and use find and replace (Computer), Google Docs Editors Help, read 7 October 2026). The Docs app on a phone keeps the command under More; the steps for it, alongside Safari and Chrome, are on Ctrl+F on a phone.

Apple Pages on iPhone

Apple's steps: tap the More button, then Find, and "Enter a word or phrase in the search field. Matches are highlighted as you enter text." The Search Options button offers Whole Words and Match Case, with Apple's own example of why the first matters: when Whole Words is on, “searching for ‘under’ won’t find the word ‘underline’”. Apple also lists where Find looks: "the main body text, headers and footers, tables, text boxes, shapes, footnotes and endnotes, and comments" (Find and replace text in Pages on iPhone, Pages User Guide for iPhone, read 7 October 2026).

If you do not know which Pages document holds the word, the search field in Pages' document manager is a different tool. Apple says it can find a document "by its title or content (including text, author name, media file names, video and image descriptions, comments and more)" (Find a Pages document on iPhone, Pages User Guide for iPhone, read 7 October 2026).

Apple Notes on iPhone

Notes searches in two ways. Across every note: tap the Search button and type, and Apple says the search covers "tags, typed and handwritten text (in supported languages), objects that appear in images, and text in scanned documents". Inside one note: tap the Note Actions button, then Find in Note, and "To search PDFs and other attachments, select Include Attachments". One exception: "If a note is locked, only its title appears in the search results" (Search through your notes on iPhone, iPhone User Guide, read 7 October 2026).

When the word is inside a picture or a scan

A scanned page or a photo of a page is an image, so a Find command that reads typed text has nothing to match unless the app reads the image itself. The pages above differ sharply on this:

Notes is the only one whose own help page says its search reads "text in scanned documents" (the Search through your notes page above).
Pages: the list of places Find looks, on the Find and replace text in Pages page above, does not include images. The document manager's search mentions "image descriptions", which is a description someone has written, not the text in the picture.
Word: neither Microsoft page above mentions pictures or scanned text. What Word does with a scanned PDF you open in it is covered on applying OCR in Word.
Google Docs: the Find and replace page above does not mention images either. Google Drive can turn a scanned PDF or photo into a Docs file with text you can search; OCR in Google Drive has Google's steps and limits.

PDFs and web pages

A PDF open in a viewer, or a page in Safari or Chrome, has its own find command in yet another place; Ctrl+F on a phone maps them. When a find in a PDF comes back empty although the word is plainly on the page, searching for a word in a PDF works through why.

When the word could be in any of many PDFs

Every command on this page searches the one document you have open. If your documents are PDFs and you do not know which one holds the word, DocFind searches inside many PDFs at once, on iPhone and Android, and each result shows the file, the page and the surrounding text. It reads PDFs only: Word files, Excel workbooks, text files, Pages documents and notes are outside what it can search. Scanned PDFs are read for printed text, not handwriting.