leo@duttnph.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart) (04/10/91)
I am having a problem with MS Word 4.0 that is driving me totally *nuts*. I hope that somebody can help me - the manual doesn't. I have a style, called 'Reference'. The *only* way in which it differs from my 'Normal' style is in that it changes some ruler stuff (indentation and right margin to be precise). Now I do not write my references in Word itself: I import them, formatted and all (i.e. with titles in italics etc.) from the program EndNote. This works perfectly, except that usually the text gets pasted in 'Normal' style. So I want to change styles to 'Reference', and this is where it all goes wrong: for a number of the 'Normal' paragraphs, MS Word will lose *all* font style information when changing the paragraph style to 'Reference'. What is making me go crazy is that I have not the faintest idea about *what* the criterion is for this to happen. 95 % of the paragraphs reformat correctly. The other 5 % don't. I have no clue as to why. Sometimes if you insert e.g. seven random plain characters after the second '^n' in such a paragraph, then the reformat will work. In this it behaves consequently - insert 1 to 6 characters and reformatting causes plain text, insert 7, and it always works OK. But that doesn't work for all the paragraphs in the 5 %, and I really am on the verge of a major nervous breakdown here. Can anybody *please* explain what is happening to me? I don't even want to know a solution, I just want to know why it is happening! Thanks... -- Leo Breebaart (leo @ duttnph.tudelft.nl)
xdab@ellis.uchicago.edu (David Baird) (04/11/91)
In article <leo.671276498@galaxy> leo@duttnph.tudelft.nl writes: >I am having a problem with MS Word 4.0 that is driving me totally *nuts*. >I hope that somebody can help me - the manual doesn't. > >I have a style, called 'Reference'. The *only* way in which it differs from >my 'Normal' style is in that it changes some ruler stuff (indentation and >right margin to be precise). > >Now I do not write my references in Word itself: I import them, formatted >and all (i.e. with titles in italics etc.) from the program EndNote. This >works perfectly, except that usually the text gets pasted in 'Normal' style. > >So I want to change styles to 'Reference', and this is where it all >goes wrong: for a number of the 'Normal' paragraphs, MS Word will >lose *all* font style information when changing the paragraph style >to 'Reference'. > >What is making me go crazy is that I have not the faintest idea about >*what* the criterion is for this to happen. >95 % of the paragraphs reformat correctly. The other 5 % don't. >I have no clue as to why. Sometimes if you insert e.g. seven random >plain characters after the second '^n' in such a paragraph, then the >reformat will work. >In this it behaves consequently - insert 1 to 6 characters and >reformatting causes plain text, insert 7, and it always works OK. >But that doesn't work for all the paragraphs in the 5 %, and I really >am on the verge of a major nervous breakdown here. > >Can anybody *please* explain what is happening to me? I don't even >want to know a solution, I just want to know why it is happening! Well, I don't know why, but I do have a solution that works. I find this phenomenon happening in footnotes that I am reformatting. My routine is to use the find feature to find the paragraph markers (i.e., ^p in the find dialog box). When the paragraph marker is selected I can apply the new format and italic stays italic. I wish I could select all the footnotes and globally apply a new format. But this does seem to work, and if you have an expanded keyboard, you can use it to select the next paragraph marker by pressing the the = key on the numeric keypad. I then get a routine set up to hit the "=" key on the numeric keypad, and then hit command-a (repeat the last command which is to apply the new format), hit the "=" key, etc. It works, I don't know why, but it works. -- X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X X David Baird xdab@midway.uchicago.edu X X University of Chicago d-baird@uchicago.edu X X University Computing Organizations (312) 702-7161 X
Mike_Dustan@ucs.sfu.ca (Mike Dustan) (04/16/91)
In article <leo.671276498@galaxy> leo@duttnph.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart) writes: > So I want to change styles to 'Reference', and this is where it all > goes wrong: for a number of the 'Normal' paragraphs, MS Word will > lose *all* font style information when changing the paragraph style > to 'Reference'. Another MS Word counterintuitive oddity... I've found that if I simply place the insertion point in a paragraph (single click, no text actually selected) and change the style, the entire paragraph changes to the plain-for-style character format for the new style; all character formatting is discarded. HOWEVER, if I select one word, or even a single character, and apply the style, character formatting is retained. Hope this helps! Mike