all Font effects boxes half-grayed/greened for no reason

[Raydar]

When I do a Select All in my Word 2003 document and go Format-->Font, every
checkbox in the Effects section of the font properties box is
half-greyed/greened, as though each and every effect is used somewhere, but
not everywhere, in the document.

However, when I select just a single paragraph and go Format-->Font, none of
the checkboxes are checked or half-grayed/greened, except one checkbox in the
2 or 3 paragraphs where I actually have small caps. This is true for each
and every paragraph in the document.

I can do a Select All and change font color, face, size, etc., and the
change is applied to the text of the document as I look at it, but in the
toolbars where the font face and size are displayed, those fields remain
blank as though more than one font is used in the document--which is not the
case.

My office gets Word documents from several authors; some authors' documents
never behave this way, and for those that do, not every document by that
author behaves this way. The documets do use styles.

Anyone know why this happens, and perhaps how to remedy it?

Thanks for any help!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In general, there are two reasons for settings check boxes being grayed or
half-checked.

1. The formatting in the selection is mixed: you have some paragraphs or
characters that are formatted a certain way and others that aren't.

2. Your selection exceeds the (unknown) magic number of paragraphs Word can
keep track of. At some point, a selection becomes so large that Word doesn't
report anything about it: for example, you'll see that the Style and Font
boxes also go blank, even if all the text is in the same style and font.
Don't be discouraged or misled by this; you can still apply formatting to
the selection by checking or unchecking the boxes.