Style/Formatting Issues with Word 2007 and older versions

[TallEditor]

Is there an easier way to correct style/formatting issues from a
multi-authored document (where some authors are using a different version of
Word or a different word processing software altogether) without having to
recreate the entire document? I find that if I do not recreate the document
when performing a style edit (i.e., select all, paste without formatting in a
new document and then go through and clean up the styles) I'll try to make
one change and end up with some inexplicable change that I did not ask for;
like font style, color, or headings totally removed. Others in my office
have similar issues where they cannot save documents or change styles. Some
of the documents I work with are several hundred pages long, so having to
totally recreate a document each time to rid it of conflicting formatting
from other programs can be very time consuming.

Any ideas?

 

[Stefan Blom]

If each editor could agree on using a specific set of styles, that would
make the editing process a lot easier, of course.

Having said that, I still believe that some "fixing" would be required when
finishing the document... And although Find and Replace, for example, might
be helpful, this would be mainly a manual task.