RE: Globally changing word styles?

["Lauren" <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>]

Hi Tammy,

What you are describing is a messy process, but it is doable.  Here is how I
handle situations like this.  Other people may have different methods or a
different order to some of my method.

1. Define the new or target styles for your document.

2. Perform a replace (Ctrl+H) in Word.  Click "More," then "Format," and
select "Style..." and choose a style.  For "Find what" choose the document
style that you want to replace and for "Replace with" choose the new style
to use.  Make sure that the text boxes are empty and that nothing else is in
your search.  Click "Replace" if you want review each change or "Replace
All" to globally replace every occurrence of the style.

3. Search (Ctrl+F) for "Normal" as in #2.  Apply the correct styles to the
text where Normal is over-ridden while the text still indicates what the
correct style may be.  Later, Normal will look normal, so it will be harder
to tell what style a block of text should have.

4. Review, or at least spot check, the document to make sure that you have
changed all of the bad styles.

5. Select the entire document (Ctrl+A) and apply "Default Paragraph Font" to
get rid of remaining style overriding.  This style, or option, may need to
be enabled through the custom "Show" menu of the "Styles and Formatting"
task pane.  (Task pain, if you ask me.)

6. Review the document to make sure that all text has an appropriate style.

7. Show all styles, or at least the styles in use if performing step 10, in
the "Styles and Formatting" task pane and delete all of the bad styles.

8. Search for the style, "Normal" because text that was not corrected and
still had a bad style will revert to Normal.  Apply appropriate styles to
Normal text if Normal is found.

9. Review the document again.

10. If you don't want to risk retaining bad styles, then after your document
has the right styles and none of the bad styles in use, copy all of the text
from the document into a new document.  Only styles that are used will be
copied.  Check your new document to make sure that you have only what you
want.

Lauren

P.S.  About your tag line, what do after you get your own way?  Frown,
laugh, or just stop smiling?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com 
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On 
> Behalf Of Van Boening, Tammy
> Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 8:08 AM
> To: TECHWR-L -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Globally changing word styles?
> 
> All,
> 
> My group has inherited tons and tons of Word docs written in 
> a very old
> version of Word. I have Word 2003 on Windows XP2. I am able 
> to open the
> Word documents just fine. They are a mix of styles and overridden
> Normal. Eventually, we want to get these documents converted to
> Framemaker for use in ePublisher. (I know ePublisher converts 
> Word, but
> our internal standard is Framemaker with ePublisher.)  For now, we are
> tasked with getting these cleaned up and serviceable so that 
> we can they
> aren't a one-off, but lend themselves to reuse and easier 
> conversion. My
> first task is to get the paragraph styles we use in Framemaker and the
> styles used in these Word documents in synch. For example, we have a
> HeadLev1 paragraph style in our Framemaker templates so I want to take
> all the Heading 1 styles in these Word documents and get them 
> converted
> to HeadLev1. Is there a way to globally change styles in Word like you
> can globally change paragraph tags in Framemaker? Right now, 
> I am using
> the very labor intensive process of selecting all of one kind of style
> and then one-by-one manually changing each selection. Ugh - for the
> volume of documents that I have inherited, this really isn't the way I
> want to go, but . . .
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> TVB
> 
> 
> Tammy L. Van Boening
> Senior Technical Writer
> Fiserv Insurance Solutions 
> Property and Casualty Division
> 303-729-7733
> tammy -dot- vanboening -at- fiserv -dot- com
> **************************************************************
> *********
> Keep smiling, at least until you get your own way.
> 
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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