Preserving formatting when applying styles

[Nick_W]

I often assemble documents made up of parts written by different people, in a
hodge-podge of styles. Once assembled, I apply the custom style we use for
all documents to the assembled text. When I did this in Word 2003, all
direct formatting (italics, subscripts, etc) was preserved (unless I used the
format painter; then, everything would be changed to that style's basic
format). However, in Word 2007 (which I have only recently started using),
when I apply a style, regardless of how, all direct formatting disappears.
There must be a solution to this, but I have been unable to find it, and
would appreciate any input.

I apologise if this question has been asked and answered before; I was
unable to find it.

Thank you.

 

[Natelle]

HI, The way I know Word 2003 works is actually that you have to highlight an
area of the paragraph, starting with a character that does not have the
hand-applied formatting that you wish to preserve when you apply the new
style. That is how you preserve the original hand-applied character
formatting. So that must have been what you are doing then.

I don't know Word 2007 ...

I found this online training for Word 2007:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102155661033.aspx

There's a section on applying styles there...

Sorry I know that's not the answer you were looking for.

Natelle

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

You could use Find/Replace to change direct formatting into character
styles (in the Find box, use characteristics from More > Format >
Font, or just type their keyboard shortcuts; and in the Replace box,
use styles from Format > Style). These should then not get overridden
when you apply paragraph styles.