I don't remember which web page(s) I collected these from, but when searching in Word, either in the "Find" box or in VBA (macros), you have the following "shortcut" keys:
Code:
^m page break
^b ^12 if using wildcards section break (can't use in "Replace" box)
^n section break
^t tab
^+ em dash
^= en dash
^g any graphic
^? any character
^# any digit
^$ any letter
^w white space (can't use in "Replace" box)
^^ caret character
^p ^13 if using wildcards paragraph return
^l line feed
I have written Word macros (with a whole lot more anguish than Excel, that's for sure!), but only for my own occasional use. I can copy what I have here, and you can play with them or tweak them to your personal specifications.
It's embarrassing to admit, but I convert each book I touch to three formats (well, four, if you count RTF): eBookwise, Mobipocket, and Sony LRF. I own devices that read those, and don't want to have to remember - "oops, gotta grab the Sony to read that book!"
The first macro - Ebook Cleanup Word Macro - is used on a basic document in Word. It doesn't clean up multiple line-feeds, like the kind you get in Gutenburg texts. I usually start with an html file that I've either copy-and-pasted into Word, or one I've opened in Word. To avoid certain Word formatting issues that cause macro errors, I usually save the raw file to RTF, close it, then reopen it before running the macro.
For the true programmers here, I'm probably blaspheming. But I haven't coded HTML since it was 3.2. It's too time-consuming and painful for me to relearn now. So this is just easier for me. I can add book covers and back cover "blurbs" at the beginning of every book and just make it look the way I like. So take anything here with a grain of salt. It's only helpful if it works for you!
For the first pass, I start out with replacing any line-feeds with paragraph returns. I seem to have fewer errors in my eBookwise files that way. I try to strip out extra spaces before the paragraph returns, to avoid those odd "blank pages" that really contain one "space" character right before a page break.
It also gives you the option to delete double paragraph returns with singles (for when the books come with an actually page return to create blank space between the paragraphs), and to add a space after each em-dash (which, if not already there, helps cut down on too much white-space at the end of a line because of no hyphenation). Then there's a handful of fixes to try to avoid odd em-dash spacing (like "But-- ").
It also calls a "clear formatting" (from the Find and Replace logic) subroutine between each search which I found highly recommended on the word.mvps.org website.
After I've added covers/blurbs and cleaned up the book the way I like and saved the file as RTF, I run the second macro - Quick Mobi Cleanup Macro - to put those line-feed characters back in where I want blank rows. I found that when I used Mobipocket Creator on my initial RTFs I had 1) too much white-space between paragraphs (my paragraph format has some spacing built into the beginning and end) and 2) my intention blank rows disappeared!
So this changes the paragraph format to having no padding and changes those double paragraphs to paragraph & line feed. It also tries to find things like page break & paragraph, and changes those extra paragraph returns to line feeds, too.
It also tells you to manually correct any section breaks & paragraph returns, because the section break shortcut code (^b) can't be used in the "Replace" function in Word (even though it CAN be in "Find" - what's up with that?!)
I save the file again, with "Mobi" at the end of the filename. It's that second RTF file I import into Mobipocket Creator.
Then, because Mobipocket Creator makes a new HTML file, with associated pictures in a separate file, I zip those up and import them to Calibre to make my Sony LRFs. (Whew!)
Finally, I've attached a third file with some macro "snippets" I was playing with or found hints about online. I'm not even sure what they do. But who knows, they might be useful to you.
HTH