retain character attributes

[Guest]

Is there a way to keep italics, bold and underlining when changing a
paragraph style, e.g., italicized cites in a legal brief? My experience is
sometimes it leaves the attribute exactly as it was, sometimes it knocks out
the attribute entirely and sometimes it gives the entire paragraph the
attribute.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you don't have the text selected when you apply a different style (that
is, if you just click in a portion of the paragraph that does not contain
direct formatting), there's a good chance direct formatting will not be
affected, but Word uses an algorithm based on proportion. If half or more of
the paragraph (roughly) has direct formatting, then it will likely be
removed (or reversed).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Klaus Linke]

A good way to avoid the problem is to use Find/Replace (replace one style
with the other, leaving both "Find what" and "Replace with" empty).

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Arshia]

This has been a constant problem for my company, and this is the first answer
that makes sense. We have numerous division working on what will be a final
document, and we have not, yet, been able to get all divisions to use the
same styles. In the mean time we assemble documents, and much of what we cut
and past are entire cross out or underlined paragraphs. Can the algorithim
that analyzes the paragraph for characters before changing the style be
turned off? Are there any other work around solutions that you know of?

Thank you,

Arshia Javaherian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can paste as unformatted text, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
I suspect that you are attempting to retain tracking. If so, see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/trackchanges/HowTrackChangesWorks.html,
which explains how to paste text containing tracked changes without losing
the tracking.