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

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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

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-06-09T10:16:03+00:00

    Last night I tested a document on my laptop which has NOT had the June update to Office 365 Business and it found all the italics and bold. I then allowed the laptop to update to the latest version and I was no longer able to find the italics or the bold in the same document.

    Stefan, as a matter of interest, did you test finding the italics and bold in a document that was created before the June update or created by someone else (who may or may not have updated yet)? I can find italics/bold in new documents I create myself, or where I've applied the italics/bold since the update.

    Averill

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  2. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-06-08T20:40:56+00:00

    In a quick test, I haven't been able to see any problems with finding and replacing bold (or italic) formatting.

    As Rohn007 wrote, specific steps for reproducing this issue will be required. It is the only chance to convince Microsoft that something needs to be done.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-06-08T19:49:44+00:00

    We'll be here when you have time.

    The key to this sort of trouble shooting is you have to be able to define a way for someone else, specifically MS developers, to recreate the problem.  It may be a "too obvious", but if the developers cannot recreate the problem, they can't fix it ...

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-06-08T19:36:00+00:00

    Thanks for this, Rohn007. It's not necessarily only new documents in which I can find italics and bold. If the italics or bold was created by someone other than me, even if with a day or so, I can't find the italics/bold. It seems that I have to have created the italics/bold myself inside the last couple of days for it to be found.

    Let me meet my deadline on Monday and I'll spend some time following your instructions to report the issue. I guess that's the only way it will get fixed.

    Averill

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