Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Formatting Text in Custom Document Properties.

Formatting Text in Custom Document Properties

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 18, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, and 2013


Mark asked if there is a way to apply character-level formatting (bold, italic, etc.) to text that is stored in a custom document property. The short answer is that there is no way to do this. There is, however, a way to apply formatting the field used to insert the document property into the body of your document. Follow these steps:

  1. Press Ctrl+F9 to insert a pair of field braces.
  2. Inside the field, type the following: docproperty Custom1 /* charformat
  3. Manually format the "d" in docproperty the way you want (bold, italics, etc.).
  4. Press F9 to update the field.

The above steps result in the document property being formatted with the same characteristic that you applied to the first character in step 3. If the document property has more than one word in it, you should realize that the formatting will only be applied to the first word in the result.

This, of course, won't help you if you need a more granular level of formatting. For instance, if the document property is a single-word company trademark and the first four characters are in regular type and the last five are in bold, then that level of formatting cannot be done through either document properties or in the field used to insert the document property.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13259) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Formatting Text in Custom Document Properties.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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