Character-type styles remove all preexisting formatting

[wildetudor]

I use styles a lot in my documents, of both the paragraph and character
types. However the styles which are of type "character" have a nasty feature
about them - they strip away any previous formatting, and I can't figure out
a way to make them *add* to that already-existing formatting, rather than
*replace* it with their own formatting.

For example, just recently I had some text which included some variables
with subscripts (e.g. f0, with the 0 being subscripted to look like an index
for f). I also had a character-type style that was supposed to apply a
certain color. When I applied it to my text, it did indeed change the color,
however it also ruined all the existing formatting (i.e. it levelled all of
the subscripts).

It seems paragraph-type styles don't behave the same way (i.e. they don't
strip away existing formatting), however I would like to find a way for
character-type styles to also not do that. Can anyone help? Anticipated
thanks.

 

[Stefan Blom]

When you apply a character style it clears the direct formatting applied to
text; I don't think there is a way around that.

On the other hand, when you apply a paragraph style to a paragraph, any
direct formatting will be preserved if it is applied to less than 50% of the
text.

 

[macropod]

Answered in http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/microsoft-office-support/

When posting the same query in multiple forums, it's polite to say so.