Word 2003: Inconsistent Style issue (applying to hidden text)

[John Harris:Maine]

I am submitting this for a peer who is on vacation. I’m submitting his notes
and will clarify items as necessary.

Scenario Overview:
We are upgrading our Word automation application from Word 97 to Word 2003
and are finding several inconsistencies in behavior. The topic of this post
is regarding the application of a paragraph style to a paragraph that also
contains some text that has a character style applied (hidden text). Below
is a sample that demonstrates the issues we are seeing regarding the use of
paragraph styles and how it affects our use of the hidden-text style.


Scenario Detail:

1. Select Tools | Options | View and uncheck hidden text under formatting
marks.
2. Set up two paragraph styles (characteristics are not important) and a
character style based on the underlying properties of the paragraph and has
an effect of 'hidden'.
3. Apply the first paragraph style to the half the document and the second
paragraph style to the remaining text.
4. Then apply the character style (hidden) to selected text within either of
the first two styles. Be sure to select some text that is at the beginning
of the paragraph. (Although it is not necessary to cause this problem, that
is the way we use it the majority of the time.)
5. Next select the text that has a paragraph style applied but also contains
text that has the character style(hidden text), then apply the other
paragraph style to this selected text. This can be done by many methods with
varying results. Most of the time the text with character style (hidden)
becomes visible. The ways that we have attempted are:
a. Select text by left clicking with the mouse and dragging to the end, then
selecting the new style from the drop down list on the formatting toolbar.
b. Using the mouse and moving to the far left edge to get the right-upward
pointing arrow to select one or multiple lines of text and then applying the
new style from the drop down list on the formatting toolbar.
c. Using the format painter, by single and double clicking on the icon and
then applying the formatting by dragging across selected text and going to
the far left edge to use the right-upward pointing arrow.
Note: We have also tried selecting text by using the Ctrl+Shift in
combination with the arrow, home, end, page up and page down keys. This
seems to give us the best results, but not consistently.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi John,

You're right, it's inconsistent. But there still are some rules.

Whether applying a paragraph style removes character formatting depends on
how many characters had been formatted.

If less than half (I think), the character formatting stays.
If more than half, the character formatting is removed.

There are exceptions, if the character formatting was applied piecemeal, or
if you have more than one paragraph selected before applying the style, or
if the specific character formatting is part of the new applied style.

All in all, it's a mess.

I think it's always been like this, even in Word97.
But most users expect that applying a paragraph style only changes
paragraph formatting, not character formatting.
At least I did... :-/

BTW, another good way to apply a paragraph style is:
d. Make sure no text is selected, then apply the style.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[John Harris:Maine]

Klaus,
Can you direct me to some documentation where I can "read" these rules
and others like them? Especially a specific location for this one. Maybe
then I can learn how to navigate the documentation on my own.

Thanks!

John

 

[Klaus Linke]

Can you direct me to some documentation where I can

"read" these rules and others like them?

Sorry, don't know anywhere except these newsgroups ... where there have
been a few threads that you might find with Google, such as:
http://www.google.com/groups?th=fc5fddb4c6cc9cf6

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Klaus Linke]

.... and the issue drives be absolutely bonkers right now:

I want to remove italic formatting.
Ctrl+I either applies "italic" to all of the selection, or toggles some
parts of the selection from "italic" to "not italic", and the rest from
"not italic" to "italic", depending on how many characters in the selection
were italic before.

Fortunately, "Find/Replace" is still an option (though more work): Replace
"italic" with "not italic" (Ctrl+I twice).

Posting the issue in .word.application.errors was right on target :-/

Klaus