Style change, find/replace bug?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Nancy McDonald-Kenworthy reports: <<I'm editing (in Ms Word, Win2k OS) 
a technical manual for a software company in Korea... The doc was 
originally written in Korea, and I'm editing here in the states.   I'm 
using the tools/track changes/highlight changes function. Right now, 
I'm trying to replace a Normal paragraph style w/ character font style 
that I've created (I call it "icon") and wanted this to be used for 
every instance of a word, (hypothetical name here) called, "xabc.">>

If you ever make a global change through the search and replace dialog, 
and the author doesn't need to see and approve the change, ***turn off 
revision tracking*** before you make the change. In addition to saving 
the author from having to review each of these changes (which they have 
no choice but to approve), you also help Word work more smoothly.

<<I'm having no problem when I replace the word w/ the character style 
one at a time. (It doesn't show via a "track change")>>

It should. The odds are good that you've set the view options 
(Tools-->Options-->Track changes-->Format change) to not apply any 
formatting to simple format changes. Nothing wrong with that. However:

<<... when I tried to change them all through "find/replace"... I did 
the "find" to be "xabc" in Normal style, and "replace" with "xabc" in 
the icon character style.   When I hit the "replace all" button, I saw 
every (all 151 of them, of course) instance was changed... the deleted 
version was the icon style, and the replaced version is the Normal 
style.>>

Do you mean that the original text, in Normal style, was marked as 
deleted, and the new text, in icon style, was marked as inserted? 
That's precisely what should happen. But if you mean that the word is 
marked as deleted, and a new word is inserted in Normal style, that's 
more than a bit odd. It's possible that you can't replace with 
character styles; haven't tried that. You might try the global replace 
_without_ specifying Normal in the "find what" field and see if that 
helps.

Here's a workaround that should work:
- Turn off revision tracking.
- Open the find/search dialog, and enter the word you're looking for. 
Don't bother specifying any style.
- Press Return to find the first instance.
- Close the dialog box, and apply the character style ("Icon") from the 
style menu.
- Press Control-PageDown to find the next instance of the word. It 
should be highlighted to show that it's selected.
- Press Control-Y ("apply the same change as the last one I did").
- Repeat the two previous steps until you reach the end of the document.
- Turn on revision tracking again and continue editing.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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