Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 18, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365
David is editing a book of 300+ pages with chapters of varying length. Some chapters have a "floating" graphic frame (a picture) as a border around the text on every page. There are two types of borders, and some chapters have one type, others have a different one. Some chapters have no borders. Each chapter with a border is defined by section breaks. David wonders if there is a simple way to replace the borders for only one set of chapters.
There is, unfortunately, no easy way to do this. True, you can use Find and Replace to locate (and replace) graphics, but you can't instruct it to locate a specific type of graphic. In other words, Find and Replace cannot differentiate between one type of border graphic and the other type of border graphic. You could step through each graphic using Find and Replace and individually make your decision about whether to replace it or not, but such a manual approach could get a bit tiresome with so many graphics in the long document.
Another approach, though, may be to "restructure" your document a bit. For instance, assuming that your floating graphic is actually in the header or footer of your document, you could create a paragraph style that you use for each type of header or footer. One style could be used for one type of border, a second style for the other type of border, and a third style for no border at all. Once organized in this manner, you could easily do a Find and Replace for the specific style, changing graphics used within paragraphs using that style.
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