subscripts and superscripts

[molart]

Hi

As a chemist, I make extensive use of subscripts and superscripts in my
documents. In Word 5.1 it was easy, and I have it set up so that all my
superscripts appear in 10 point type, raised by 3 points; and all my
subscripts appear in 10 point type, lowered by 2 points. the document
is typed in 12 point font usually.

Now that I'm reluctantly migrating to Office 2001 for Mac, it appears
that the subscripts and superscripts set up in Word come out too small
(around 7.5 points I think). I can't find any reference anywhere in the
help files for how one can change this.

So what I want to know is:

1) Is there any way of changing the default subscript/superscript
settings in Word so that I can get them how I want them?

or 2) Is there any way, when I've finished my document, of finding all
the subscripts (or superscripts) and replacing them all with a bigger
font. It appears that you can search for almost anything... except
superscript and subscript. And it's not helped by the fact that when
you subscript a character, it doesn't appear as a reduced font size in
the formatting palette, so you can't for example search for everything
that is in 7.5 point type and change it to 10 point. I'm sure this has
something to do with the way that Word does it, probably by percentages
rather than actually changing the font size.

This is driving me up the wall so any help would be greatly
appreciated!

Mike

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

In the Find/Replace dialog, click on More, use Format... Font to set
characteristics. I managed to find superscript numbers, and to replace them
with superscripts in a certain point size, but 10pt actually made the
footnote number look smaller. (I am also using MacWord 2001, although this
is not a mac-specific question, I'm pretty sure).

I think that Word considers the action "superscript" to involve both raising
and shrinking. That is, what you used to do in two steps, they have
combined into one automatic step, and apparently not allowed you to adjust
either. (A common way to change Word's defaults is to modify a style, but I
couldn't find a style for either Superscript or Subscript.) Most people do
probably consider this an advance in ease of use (think about enlarging text
to put on a poster).

I would imagine that you could mess around with font sizes--e.g.,
superscript in 18pt might be about what you want--and then run a
Find/Replace to find all superscript and replace with superscript in 18pt.
You could even create a macro that saves the F/R settings, to do it in one
click.

I'm not familiar with Word 5.1, but here are some features to explore which
may not have been available in it. It seems a lot of scientists use
Equation Editor (a version of MathType, which you can install from the Value
Pack) to create these types of text. Also look into AutoText and
AutoCorrect, which would allow you, for instance, to type h2o and
automatically have it corrected to proper capitalization and subscripting.

DM

 

[&:-jesse\)]

Take a look at the Font Character Spacing tab.

Format | Font | Character Spacing | Position: select the
amount you want the character raised or lower from the
pick list.

jesse

 

[molart]

Hi

Well, that's helped a bit in that I have now spotted that I can searc
for things that are subscripted or superscripted, but as you say whe
you replace that with 10 point text it actually gets smaller. That'
presumably because Word still counts it as being 12 point text to star
with, rather than actually reducing its size, so when it changes it t
10 point, it retains the superscripting style which means that it end
up worse than ever. As you say I may have to experiment with making i
bigger. I just can't believe there isn't a way to customise this; i
only they'd given us this rather than 50 ways to customise the Offic
assistant, it might have been more worthwhile!

Mik

 

[molart]

Hi

Yes, I know that. But to do it for hundreds of separate subscripts an
superscripts in a document is a real pain...

Mik