[ALeiS]

Thank you, thank you, Gordo.

Finally, something that will be useful. If I click on "select all [n]
instances" of the style Word has named "Bold" (which really seems to mean
'Default font and size + Bold' and no other attribute) it will highlight all
text that is "bold" (and only bold-it won't show text that is bold+italics or
bold but not in the default font and font size). It would still be way more
efficient to have something that shows all the text with indicators of how
the text is formatted (i.e. focusing on the text rather than the style). But
this "select all [n]" feature shows more than a character or a word at a
time-at least for the formatting I have asked the style window to focus on.

Gordo, you seem to intuitively recognize that this is really a display issue
and has little to do with whether formatted text is a string of "code" or a
"container" full of characters. The Word program definitely knows what all
the formatting is, but it is set up to only show the user little pieces at a
time. Your suggested fix allows the user to at least see some bigger pieces
which will make a positive difference. [I get the impression that many of
these forum members are programmers. To help them understand: could you
imagine trying to find a mistake in a program if you could only look at one
character of code at a time? I bet it would drive you nuts; wouldn't you
want everything visible at once so you could find what the problem was?]

More help for my fellow reluctant Word converts:

If you set it to show only "Formatting in use" (pull-down menu at the bottom
of the "Styles and Formatting" window), then it will only show the formatting
you have actually used and not an overwhelming list of "Body 1" and "Header
2" etc. You can still directly format your text using shortcuts (Ctrl+b,
etc.) or clicking on the little icons on the toolbar if you're a
mouse-oriented person; you don't have to use the style window to actually
format anything. And you don't have to dump any time into creating "styles"
for the formats you want to use because Word has already defined them. You
CAN still have direct control of your document and not be a slave to a
program that tries to think for you and consistently misinterprets whatever
it is you are trying to accomplish.

A small limitation is that every added attribute will trigger a
distinguishable style name. "Bold" is a different "style" from "Arial, Bold"
"13 pt, Bold" and "Bold, Left: 0.5" ([default font and size] bold and
intented half an inch at the left margin). This is not ideal when compared
to a system that is attribute-focused and clearly shows where each
independent attribute starts and ends-but it is better than nothing. Also,
the style formatting window does not appear to display things having to do
with page margins or tab stops (and probably other things I haven't noticed
yet), though it does display justification (centering, etc.).

A warning: be sure to click on the pull-down menu (downward-pointing arrow)
for whatever style you want to highlight. If you click on the style name
itself then it will actually apply that formatting to text in your document.
If no text is highlighted, it will sometimes reformat a single word and
sometimes the entire paragraph-I haven't figured out why that is. You can
also RIGHT-click anywhere on the style name to get the pull-down menu so you
don't have to aim directly at the pull-down arrow.

A potentially useful trick: you can scan the list of formats ("styles") in
use and if you see something like "Arial, Bold" and your document is supposed
to be all Times New Roman, then you can use "select all [n] instances" to go
directly to the incorrectly formatted text [remember to right-click or hit
the pull-down menu and not the style name itself] and fix it.

Best of luck to all.

"gordo" wrote:


Because you
can't see a list of all the text with applicable "styles" all at the same
time, you would have to scroll through a letter at a time to check
everything

When you have the Styles and Formatting Task Pane showing, the currently
selected text style will be shown near the top in a box titled: Formatting
of selected text. Hover over this box to show the drop down arrow. Click the
down arrow and select the "Select all nnn instance(s)" to "reveal" every
instance of the same format as shown by the selection highlights. This may
not show all the time but it does provide a way of seeing all the text with
the same style.

Is this what you were referring to in the above sentence?

Gordo