Find and Replace styles

[Bert Coules]

My apologies if the answer to this is available anywhere: I've searched and
can't find it.

I'm using Word 2000 under windows XP Pro SP2.

I've just tried (for the first time) a global Find and Replace for two
different styles. I enter the style names in the Find and Replace box with
no problem, click on Replace All and the message box reports that Word "has
made 1017 replacements". Great - except that it hasn't. The original style
is still there and hasn't been changed at all.

If I immediately click on Replace All again, the same thing happens: "1017
replacements" are reported.

What am I lkely to be doing wrong, please?

The styles involved are very straightforward, simple, short formatting
instructions.

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Bert

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Do the "Find what" and "Replace with" boxes contain any text (even something
invisible such as spaces)?

Interestingly, when I do this in a document containing a single style
(Normal) and replace it with Body Text, Word claims only 1 replacement.

 

[Bert Coules]

Do the "Find what" and "Replace with" boxes contain any text (even
something invisible such as spaces)?

No, nothing at all.

I've made a strange discovery. If I do the Find and Replace operation, then
go into the drop-down Styles menu and *delete* the name of the "Find"
style - then the Find and Replace is shown to have worked. The "Replace"
style is suddenly there, all the way through.

So I've sort of solved the problem, though I've really no idea what was
going on before.

Thanks for the reply.

Bert

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Was one of the styles a character style? Or "formatting" rather than a
style?

 

[Bert Coules]

Suzanne,

Thanks for the reply.

Was one of the styles a character style? Or "formatting" rather than a
style?

I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what those are: I'm still feeling my way with
styles. But each one (both the Find and the Replace) were just very brief
statements of formatting, saved as (and applied as) a style, and appearing
in the drop-down Style menu. Is that what you mean by '"formatting" rather
than a style'?

Surely if it's saved as a style and applied as a style, it's a style - isn't
it?

And if they were "formatting" would that explain the oddness I noted with
the Find and Replace?

Bert

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In Word 2002 and above, by default (that is, if you haven't disabled "Keep
track of formatting" on the Edit tab of Tools | Options), Word creates
quasi-styles when you apply direct formatting to a built-in style. You can
actually save this as a style, but even if you don't, the formatting appears
in the Styles & Formatting task pane (and Style dropdown) as formatting to
be reused.

Character styles are applied on top of paragraph styles to apply font
formatting (Hyperlink, Footnote Reference, and Page Number are examples of
character styles). Word will report a character style (when one is applied)
rather than the underlying paragraph style in the Style dropdown and task
pane. Sometimes a paragraph style can be applied to a paragraph or part of a
paragraph as a character style, and odd things can happen when this is done.

Character styles (and other direct font formatting) can be removed by
selecting text and pressing Ctrl+Spacebar. Paragraph formatting can be reset
to the default style definition with Ctrl+Q.

 

[Bert Coules]

Suzanne,

Word will report a character style (when one is applied) rather than the
underlying paragraph style in the Style dropdown and task pane. Sometimes
a paragraph style can be applied to a paragraph or part of a paragraph as
a character style, and odd things can happen when this is done.

It does sound as though this, or something very similar, is what happened in
my case. Many thanks for the explanation; much appreciated.

Happily the Find style is something I'll never use again, so deleting it is
not a problem, though I'm still not used to Word's habit of apparently
saving styles along with the document, rather than separately. After many
years of WordPerfect, Word continues to baffle me...

Bert

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can save styles in the attached template (as well as the document), but
the document is more portable when it carries its own specific style
definitions (which may be slightly different from those defined in the
template) with it. See
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/sharing/WillMyFormatChange.html and
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/templaterelations/index.html

 

[Bert Coules]

Suzanne,

Thanks very much.

Bert