A weird mergeformat problem

[Guest]

Hi all,
First of all, sorry if this is a repeat, my computer kicked me off when I
first tried to post this, so I didn't know if it worked.

I have multiple INCLUDETEXT fields in a document. In the original document,
some text is formatted in color. In the combined document, I would like to
display all text as black, but keep any other formatting from the original
document the same. I added a MERGEFORMAT switch to the fields by highlighting
them and turning all the text black. Sometimes, though, that formatting
doesn't apply when the fields update, and italics, underlines, or paragraph
formatting can be done incorrectly. Could all this be the result of a
MERGEFORMAT switch, or maybe of the lock result switches I use?

Any help would be great!
Thanks,
Jezzica85

 

[Graham Mayor]

Your best bet is to ensure that any styles in the inserted document are not
repeated in the target document, and that manual formatting is replaced with
suitably defined character styles. That way there is far less scope for
conflicting formatting issues to arise.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Guest]

Hi Graham,
This is going to sound silly, but I'm not sure what you mean. In my original
documents, all of my font is exactly the same, Times New Roman, 12 pt. The
only difference is that certain lines are centered, and every now and then
some words are italicized, underlined, or colored. I think that means I'm
only using one basic style. Am I wrong? Can you give me an example of what
you mean?

Thanks,
Jezzica85

 

[Graham Mayor]

Put your cursor in the manually formatted bit of the document (say
underlined) create a new character style which will pick up the parameters
from the cursor area. Then apply it to the underlined text in that document
(you can search for underline and replace with the style, using the replace
tool).
If you have a centred paragraph create a centered style and apply it to the
paragraph.
Every uniquely formatted paragraph should have its own style applied.
Once you have a core set of personal styles, formatting and reformatting
documents becomes much simpler.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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