Version: (using KDE Devel) Installed from: Compiled sources Kword currently break Unicode. See Bug 143530 for details. In short, Kword doesn't consider equivalent what Unicode defines as equivalent. For example if a document has the string "é", searching "é" doesn't find it to match. Yet "é" and "é" are the 'same' string for Unicode.
Reported upstream; http://trolltech.com/developer/task-tracker/index_html?method=entry&id=172183