Last week I discussed the evils of directly applied formatting but didn't explain how to get rid of it. I know what you're going to say: \"Just press CTRL + A to select all and then press CTRL + SPACE.\" That will remove it, all right. The problem is, it will also remove italics, bold, and other formatting that you want to *keep.*<\/p>\n
For example, let's say you're editing a scholarly tome with acres and acres of footnotes. Nearly every one of those notes is going to cite a book or journal of some kind--with the title of each publication in italics (represented here with asterisks), like this:<\/p>\n
39. G. B. Harrison, *The Profession of English* (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), p. 166.<\/p>\n
But if you do the CTRL + SPACE thing, you're going to get this:<\/p>\n
39. G. B. Harrison, The Profession of English (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), p. 166.<\/p>\n
So what are you going to do? Go back and italicize everything by hand?<\/p>\n
There *is* a better way. In general terms, here's the procedure:<\/p>\n
1. Identify each kind of directly applied formatting you want to keep--italics, strikethrough, whatever. Maybe make a list.<\/p>\n
2. Find and replace each kind of formatting with a unique code. For example, you might use |I| to indicate italic and |B| to indicate bold. (More on this in a minute.)<\/p>\n
3. Press CTRL + A to select all and CTRL + SPACE to remove all directly applied formatting.<\/p>\n
4. Find and replace your codes with the appropriate formatting.<\/p>\n
Now let's get specific and say you're trying to preserve italics. Here's what you'd do:<\/p>\n
1. Click Edit > Replace to open Word's Find and Replace dialog.<\/p>\n
2. Leave the \"Find What\" box empty but press CTRL + I to specify italic formatting. The box will now say \"Font: Italic\" underneath.<\/p>\n
3. In the \"Replace With\" box, enter this:<\/p>\n
|I|^&|I|<\/p>\n
That code in the middle, ^&, is the \"Find What Text\" wildcard, which tells Word to use whatever it *finds* (in this case, any italicized text) as the *replacement* between your italic codes. You can learn more about the \"Find What Text\" wildcard here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?mid=1703525514<\/p>\n
4. Click the \"Replace All\" button. All of your italicized text will now be marked with codes, like this:<\/p>\n
39. G. B. Harrison, |I|The Profession of English|I| (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), p. 166.<\/p>\n
(If you wanted to preserve other kinds of formatting, such as bold, you'd repeat steps 1 through 4 here, with different codes for each kind of formatting.)<\/p>\n
5. Press CTRL + A to select all and CTRL + SPACE to remove directly applied formatting. Woo-hoo! Pretty scary, no? (You did keep a backup, right?)<\/p>\n
6. Click Edit > Replace to open Word's Find and Replace dialog.<\/p>\n
7. In the \"Find What\" box, enter the formatting codes and the * wildcard (in parentheses) to represent any text between the codes, like this:<\/p>\n
|I|(*)|I|<\/p>\n
8. Click the \"No Formatting\" button. The \"Font: Italic\" notation will go away.<\/p>\n
9. In the \"Replace With\" box, enter this:<\/p>\n
1<\/p>\n
That code tells Word to use any text it *finds* between italic codes as the *replacement* for the codes and the text between them. Clear as mud? You'll understand when you try it. You can learn more about the \"Find What Expression\" wildcard here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?mid=1706365638<\/p>\n
10. With your cursor still in the \"Replace With\" box, press CTRL + I to specify italic formatting. The box will now say \"Font: Italic\" underneath.<\/p>\n
11. Put a checkmark in the \"Use wildcards\" (or \"Use pattern matching\") box. You may need to click the \"More\" button before this is available.<\/p>\n
12. Click the \"Replace All\" button. All of your italicized text will be restored to its former glory--and all of the directly applied formatting that you *didn't* want (such as 12-point Baskerville) will be gone!<\/p>\n
If you need to do this kind of thing a lot, you can record the procedure in a macro that you can use over and over again. You can learn more about recording macros here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?mid=1706651129<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?mid=1706748016<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?mid=1706832239<\/p>\n
Or, if you'd like a macro that will clean up directly applied formatting (but preserve character formatting such as italic) in a whole folder full of documents at the same time, you might try our FileCleaner program, which you can learn more about here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.editorium.com\/14845.htm<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
_________________________________________<\/p>\n
READERS WRITE<\/p>\n
Last week Rich Shattenberg asked if it's possible to use wildcards in a custom spell-check dictionary. You can read his question here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.topica.com\/lists\/editorium\/read\/message.html?mid=1709799142<\/p>\n
This week, expert Word-whacker Steve Hudson sent the definitive reply:<\/p>\n
\"No wildcards in dic entries. Badda badda boom.\"<\/p>\n
Many thanks to Steve. It wasn't really the answer we wanted, but it's always good to know the facts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
_________________________________________<\/p>\n
RESOURCES<\/p>\n
The Office Letter<\/p>\n
The Office Letter is a weekly email newsletter that provides a plethora of tips, tricks, tools, and techniques for using Microsoft Office. It's a *nice* publication, as you can see here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.officeletter.com\/current.html<\/p>\n
And hey, the current edition includes our NameSwapper macro!<\/p>\n
The standard edition of The Office Letter is free. The premium edition includes access to all back issues, a fast search engine, and no advertising, all for just $12 a year. You can sign up for either edition here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.officeletter.com\/sub\/subscribe.html<\/p>\n