The short ill-considered answer is No and Yes.
On existing documents, if you want to keep out of writing or recording
macros, consider using the full power of find and replace.
On new documents, you might get away with autocorrect.
e.g. make "drm" an autocorrect entry for /DRM/ (with character style of
emphasis). Check the formatted box. Paste the replace with one you
prepared earlier in the document and copied to the clipboard. You can
avoid the last step if you leave the sample selected before entering
tools autocorrect...
It looks convenient for one at a time, than the brain damaged modal
dialog box won't let you go back to the document without closing it
first!!
Hello Phil,
Just a couple of thoughts after reading Elliott's comments: The problem with
styles in this context is that you want to apply italics (the "emphasis"
style Elliott refers to) or bold ('strong' style in Word's defaults) to only
part of a paragraph, so paragraph styles are out and you need to apply
character styles, for which you always have to select where you want to
apply the styles.
In similar instances (first sentence of paragraphs), I simply hold down the
Command key and click in the sentence before applying an italic style. I do
this manually even in long documents, but if I were doing it very often I
would indeed use a macro that would select and italicise as soon as I
clicked in a sentence. Post back if you need help to make such a macro and
someone is likely to help (I take ages to do macros, so it won't be me!).
I'm assuming you are modifying text produced by others. If you were
initiating text, it would be easy to insert an AutoText item that had, say,
an italicized full stop followed by a roman space. Typing before the full
stop would be in italics; after the space would be roman.
I don't have any ideas re italicizing text other than the first sentence
sorry! Long ago, Word used to have keystrokes to select certain word
groupings -- e.g. the entire word where you had clicked, then successive
words to the left -- but now that the application is based on Windows
positives and negatives, they aren't available (other than double-clicking
to select a word).
If you don't have a full grasp of paragraph styles vs character styles, take
a look at the articles 'How styles are applied', 'When to use styles and
when to format directly' and 'Paragraph styles and character styles --
what's the difference?' in "Bend Word to Your Will", available as a free
download from the Word MVPs' website
(
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm).
Cheers,
Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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in. Sometimes it takes a few responses before the best or complete solution
is proposed; sometimes you'll be asked for further information so that a
better answer can be provided. Good tips about getting the best out of
posting are at
http://word.mvps.org/FindHelp/Posting.htm (if you use Safari
you may see a blank page and have to hit the circular arrow icon -- "Reload
the current page" -- a few times).
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and we'll