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
    2019-09-30T02:54:21+00:00

    I am mostly lurking on this issue.  But @RobinRice1, I have to congratulate you on some fantastic debugging!

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-09-30T00:16:23+00:00

    Averill:  I have continued to ponder this issue (several hours now).  I have found something interesting (albeit is unfortunate):

    (forgive for any following info that is obvious and/or redundant)

    There are two basic ways to apply bold attribute:  (1) type Cntrl-b (or use "B" toolbar button in "Font" portion of ribbon)   ... or ... (2)  use Font Dialog Box to set Bold attribute.   [Naturally, method (1) is most convenient and quickest method.]

    Likewise, for Finding/Searching for bold attribute, there are also two ways, both ways using "Find and Replace" dialog box:  (A) type Cntrl-b  and under "Find what:" it will say "Format: Font: Bold"       .... or .... (B) use "Format" button at bottom left of dialog box to bring up "Font" dialog box and select "Bold" for the search.  After "OK",  F/R dialog box will also say "Format: Font: Bold".

    Sooooo, you'd think there would be no difference between methods (1) & (2) for applying Bold attribute, and likewise no difference between methods (A) and (B) for finding bold attribute -- there certainly was no difference before the June update (I am assuming).   But NOW, going forward, it appears that Method (B) for Searching will in fact find ALL Bolding, no matter which way is used to apply bolding [methods (1) or (2)].  But Method (A) for searching for Bold will ONLY find the Bolding that was applied using method (1) [cntrl-b or "B" toolbar button].

    This is definitely, in my opinion, a bug in the MS-Word program; however, the Bold attribute can still be searched for, just not as conveniently as before by using Cntrl-b. 

    For past/old/archived documents (pre-June 2019?), it appears that no matter how bold attribute was applied to text, the only way to Find/Search for them is by using method (B) Font dialog box from within the F/S dialog box.

    I haven't fully tested this out yet for Italics, but I assume that everything above applies also for Italic attribute.

    (I reviewed all of the past "replies" to your initial query, and I didn't see anything that described a similar answer as above.  If this doesn't work for you, I would be interested to know.)

    Robin Rice

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-09-29T03:53:24+00:00

    Averill:  I retired in January of this year, else I would have noticed this also in early June.  But have just now encountered this problem, and I am shocked -- shocked!  that this would occur in MS-Word.  I have thousands of archived MS-Word files, and all of the ones I have tested give the same problem and not able to Search for Bold and/or Italic attribute.   I have a personal MS-Word project begun last year that I am just now resuming, and becoming aware of this problem is very depressing.  :(    I think I will attempt to revert to previous version of Office.  I hope that works.  I will be monitoring progress on a solution to this problem.  Thank you so much for your efforts on this.

    Robin Rice

    (former Word Processor for 25+ years)

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  4. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-08-29T10:58:31+00:00

    If/when I receive a notification, I will post an update here.

    As Rohn007 wrote, Microsoft staff rarely (almost never) posts updates in this forum.

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