Manual formatting lost when style applied

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I have found (Word 97) that applying a new paragraph style to a paragraph removes any manual formatting applied to more than half the paragraph. This is a nuisance when cleaning up a document created by someone else. Has anyone found a way round this annoyance?
By way of example. In this paragraph:
(Woody Leonhard): Blecch!
The italics will disappear from “Woody Leonhard” if a new style is applied. If the paragraph were just:
(Woody): Blecch!
Then the italic formatting would survive because it covers less than half the paragraph.
Any ideas gratefully received!

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I can’t wait to hear a response to this as well!! I just blindly accepted it… but I never realized that it was dependent on “more than half the sentence”. I’ve found (also W97) that if I change a bullet style it takes all the character formatting out too… i.e.,

• item – definition
• item – definition
  [/list]If I re-applied, or applied a different style, all the bold formatting is wiped out. Is there a way to avoid this?? That would be GREAT!

  have fun

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Also, Word 97.

Just tried this on a 7 line, six sentence, paragraph.

If the first line is italic, changing styles from Normal to Body Text didn’t change the first line.

When the first two lines (not sentences) are italic, changing from Normal to Body Text did change both lines.

When I didn’t include the first sentence in italic, changing from Normal to Body Text didn’t change any of the paragraph.

When I included the last two words in the first sentence with the rest of the paragraph, it didn’t change.

When I included the last three words in the first sentence with the rest of the paragraph, changing from Normal to Body Text did change the whole paragraph.

Very strange.

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If you use Find/Replace to change the formatting, manual formatting will not be changed, regardless of whether it takes up less or more than 1/2 the paragraph. However, beware if the new style contains the same formatting as part of its definition. Character formatting like bold & italic will be toggled.

e.g. Use your Woody example & have both sentences in Heading 3 style & use Find/Replace to change to Heading 2 style (which is bold italic). Everything will be bold & the italic will toggle.

This leads to a trap for the unwary if you want to keep the italic the same.

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Most of us know that the best way to make Word “behave” is to utilize Styles.

However Paragraph based styles are those that are typically used and Character based styles are seldom used, if used at all.

The only way I have found to control this is to use a Character based style.

Since a Character based style is held at the character level, this ensures that the formats I have applied to specific characters and sentences stay applied and not follow the formatting of the paragraph style no matter what character formats the paragraph style contains. (With the exception of the “toggle” character formats such as bold. )

Not to mention that Character based styles have the same flexibility when it comes to formatting and changing my mind!
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Cheers!

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