Word no longer finding italics and bold

Anonymous
2019-06-07T12:34:05+00:00

Just in the last day or so, Word no longer finds italics or bold from the Find or Find & Replace dialogue box. I should qualify that: it will find them in some of documents but not in all of them.

I work as a professional book editor and have been using Word for many years and consider myself to be fairly experienced. Yesterday, I was able to find all italics in a properly formatted manuscript (using the styles pane) and highlight all instances of italics. Today, in the same document F&R tells me there are no italics in the document, despite me staring at them onscreen (still highlighted in yellow). It's the same in many other documents today (but not all).

I can't find italics either if I search using 'Style' in the Find box.

I'm using the downloaded version of Office 365 on an up-to-date Windows 10 PC. Any ideas as to a solution. Being able to find italics and bold is crucial to my work.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2019-11-19T07:02:11+00:00

It seems the issue is now fixed! I've had some major updates over the last few weeks and I'm now able to find italics and bold again just like before.  My Office 365 Business version number is 16.0.12130.20344.

Many thanks to everyone for interim solutions and to those who reported it.

Averill

Was this answer helpful?

1 person found this answer helpful.
0 comments

72 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-08-28T21:59:14+00:00

    I hope this helps until Microsoft admit there is an issue, investigate it and fix it.

    Note that the issue has been filed as a bug by Microsoft (see a previous reply of mine).

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-08-22T20:51:34+00:00

    It seems that F&R cannot find letters in equations unless formatting has been applied to them (including removing the italics normally applied to variables).

    That is correct. You can't use Find & Replace to locate a character inside an equation object. (Doing so has never been possible in Word.)

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2019-08-21T13:00:46+00:00

    I too have been using Word for many years and consider myself to be fairly experienced.

    I came across this extremely frustrating and time consuming anomaly today.

    I find it disgusting that Microsoft can make millions from us consumers and then treat us as idiots while   denying the issue exists. It is clearly new and was introduced with the June 2019 update.

    I am an amateur macro writer and wrote the following simple macro:

    Sub FindItalics()

        Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

        Selection.Find.Font.Italic = True

        Selection.Find.Execute

    End Sub

    If I run this macro, all instances of italics are found, even when I click 'Find Next' or press Shift+F4.

    However, after I use F&R for anything else I have to re-run the macro to find all italics again, otherwise it reverts to the issues you describe.

    I hope this helps until Microsoft admit there is an issue, investigate it and fix it.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-08-21T01:54:54+00:00

    If you send me a copy of a document with which you have the issue, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate it.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments