Word 2000 Footnote conversion

[Tadpole]

Hi,

I created custom footnotes, using 10 point superscript with round brackets
around letters ("(a)", "(b)", etc). Unfortunately, the institution for which
I did this has now changed its mind and wants footnotes done as 16 point,
bold, letters ("a", "b", etc) but with no brackets.

Is it possible to automate this using wildcards in search and replace, or
perhaps a macro? The thought of manually redoing literally thousands of
footnotes is less than appealing.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you'd just modified the Footnote Reference style, this would be a snap,
but obviously you can't include the parentheses (round brackets) in a style,
so that wouldn't have worked.

If by "custom footnotes" you mean footnotes with custom marks, you can use
Find and Replace to look for the combination using wildcards, dumping the
brackets and applying the formatting in one go. I'd advise applying the
formatting via the Footnote Reference style, modified as required.

The required search in this case would be something like this (I'm terrible
at wildcards, so some trial and error may be required; see
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm for help):

Find what: (\()([a-z])(\))
Format: Style: Footnote Text

Replace with: \2
Format: Style: Footnote Reference

The box for "Use wildcards" must be checked. The Footnote Reference style
should be defined as Bold and 16 points.

If your footnotes don't use the Footnote Text style, then you could still
run this replace just in the footnote pane (without the "Find what"
formatting).