MS Word —

Replace Styles and Formatting

The Problem:

We have a standard template for our manuals that has a style for every occasion and a few dozen styles for the stockpot. So far, so good. But now we've acquired one of our competitors and need to "translate" all their documents from their three templates to our template. And yes, you've guessed it: I get to do the "translation."

The Solution:

If you know VBA, you can write a quick macro to make this change. But if you don't know VBA, you can make the changes easily enough by using Find and Replace to replace each style from their templates with the corresponding style from your template. If you record a macro of yourself performing the replacements, you can then run it on other documents.

To replace one style with another style:

  1. Make a two-column list of the styles you want to change and what you want to change them to. You can do this on paper, or in a Word table if you find that easier.

  2. Open a document based on one of the other company's templates.

  3. Choose Tools » Templates and Add-Ins, click the Attach button, select your company's standard manual template, and click the Open button. Check the "Automatically update document styles" box, and then click the OK button.

  4. Choose Edit » Replace (or press Ctrl+H) to display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.

  5. If the "Find what" box contains text, press Delete to delete it.

  6. Click the More button if the dialog box doesn't include the Search Options section.

  7. If there are any formatting details under the "Find what" box, click the No Formatting button to remove them.

  8. Click the Format button and choose Style from the shortcut menu to display the Find Style dialog box (see Figure 3-11). Click the first of the styles you want to replace, and then click the OK button.

    Figure 3-11. Find and Replace provides an easy way of changing one set of styles to another throughout a document.

  9. Press Tab to select the "Replace with" box. If the box contains text, press Delete. If there are formatting details under it, click the No Formatting button to remove them.

  10. Click the Format button and choose Style from the shortcut menu to display the Replace Style dialog box. Choose the corresponding replacement style, and then click the OK button.

  11. Click the Replace All button to replace all instances of the style under the "Find what" box with the style under the "Replace with" box.

  12. Select the next search style and the next replacement style, and repeat the replacement. Do this for all the remaining styles you wish to replace.