Abstract In this paper, with the aid of symbolic computation we improve the extended F-expansion method described in Chaos, Solitons and Fractals 22, 111 (2004) to solve the (2+1)-dimensional Korteweg de Vries equation. Using this method, we derive many exact non-travelling wave solutions. These are more general than the previous solutions derived with the extended F-expansion method. They include the Jacobi elliptic function, soliton-like trigonometric function solutions, and so on. Our method can be applied to other nonlinear evolution equations.