Patrick has a document in which there are "start" and "stop" character sequences that indicate where italics should begin and end. For instance, in the text sequence "$$$This is some text!$!" the "$$$" indicates the start of italics and the "!$!" indicates the end. Patrick wonders if there is a way he can use Find and Replace to (1) remove the character sequences and (2) format the text between those character sequences to italics.
This type of Find and Replace may sound difficult, but Word actually makes it quite easy, provided you use wildcards in your F&R operation. Follow these steps:
That's it; only a single find-and-replace operation is needed. The "find" pattern (in step 4) indicates you want to find anything (*) surrounded by your indicated markers. Important! that the backslashes before the exclamation marks in step 4 are important, as they cause the characters to be treated as actual exclamation marks.
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The Find and Replace feature of Word is very powerful, allowing you to finely target exactly what you want to search. ...
Discover MoreThe Find and Replace capabilities of Word are very powerful. You can even use them to do some complex and specific ...
Discover MoreWhen using pattern matching in a search, you can specify individual characters or ranges of characters you want matched ...
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2015-08-29 08:48:48
Ken Endacott
Jim
The following code will change the spacing of just the one paragraph. Place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph and run the macro. Note that if the paragraph has its style re-applied then the spacings will revert to those of the style.
With Selection.Paragraphs(1).Range.ParagraphFormat
.LineSpacingRule = wdLineSpaceSingle
.SpaceAfter = 0
.SpaceBefore = 0
End With
The following code will change the spacing of the selected paragraph's style so that all paragraphs that use the style will have their spacing changed.
With ActiveDocument.Styles(Selection.Paragraphs(1).Style).ParagraphFormat
.LineSpacingRule = wdLineSpaceSingle
.SpaceAfter = 0
.SpaceBefore = 0
End With
2015-08-28 07:33:06
Jim Andrews
Phil Reinie,
That is what I'm trying to eliminate; the 6 points of white space before and after a paragraph using a macro.
Recording the process does not do the trick.
I am familiar with editing macros, but can't figure out what to place in the macro to accomplish this.
Thanks to everyone who replied.
Jim
2015-08-27 10:09:17
Phil Reinie
gbjim.andrews
Is the space above the paragraph its own paragraph or does the paragraph you with "space before" just greater space than you want?
KenE basically covered the first one:
where you are replacing paragraphs with only "white space" (no text) with no paragraph (IE, replace something with nothing (essentially delete the no-text paragraph)), ...
and in the second you can change the style of the paragraph to have zero (or whatever) points of space you want (before or after, or both) for the paragraph.
Body text paragraph style has 6 points of spacing after each paragraph, but Normal paragraph has zero point of spacing after. (They both have zero points before the paragraph.) So you could also select all paragraphs of one type (style) and change them to a different style.
2015-08-23 21:02:12
awyatt
Peter: Step 5 tells Word to use, as replacement text, the first (1) occurrence of text within parentheses from the "Find What" text.
Thus, the 1 results in whatever is matched by the asterisk (*) in the "Find What" text.
-Allen
2015-08-23 15:31:09
Peter Kirkpatrick
This is described as an easy process, but not to me! Can someone explain to me what Step 5 does?
2015-08-23 05:39:44
Ken Endacott
The easiest way to create your macro is to use Record Macro then run Find and Replace with the three Find and Replace string pairs. The three macros can then be combined into one. The strings are:
Change multiple spaces to one space:
[^32]{2,}
^32"
Remove blank paragraphs
[^13]{2,}
^p
Remove all spaces at end of paragraph:
^32{1,}^13
^p
Don't forget to turn on Use Wildcards.
2015-08-22 08:24:18
gbjim.andrews
Great!
I've been trying to use macro to:
1. set all to single space
2. remove space above paragraph
3. remove space after paragraph
All to no avail.
Any ideas?
2015-08-22 07:27:48
Rod Grealish
This technique could be used with simple embedded HTML tag pairs such as <I> </I>, <B> </B> or <H1> </H1>. A document prepared with a basic editor could be opened in Word and the tags replaced by the appropriate formatting. In step 6 of the tip replace the shortcut (Ctrl+i) by another formatting shortcut. For more complex formatting click on the Format button, Click Font ... option and select the required combination of formatting such as Font, Font style, Font size, Underline.
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