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
    2019-08-21T13:00:46+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.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-08-21T22:53:58+00:00

    @Doug Robbins: Thanks much for your generous & prompt offer.  Unfortunately, I can't share the document, and haven't the time to try to generate one that will show the problem.  (Similar to OP, a new document doesn't.)  I'm satisfied with getting any updates this thread might provide.

    It would be nice to get confirmation of something that is intertwined with the problem I described.  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).  Is that true for others?  (Sorry if that amounts to highjacking this thread.)

    @JB Morrison: Although I've had some success reaching Microsoft themselves in the Excel Community, I'm not sure how closely they monitor this one.  Be sure to register your complaint with the smiley/frowny menu in Word, which I've been told is the most effective way to report a bug (versus troubleshoot a problem).

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  3. 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.)

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-26T17:21:36+00:00

    Averill, I gave up and reverted to a previous version of Office. It made everything work again.

    Follow the instructions here:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2770432/how-to-revert-to-an-earlier-version-of-office-2013-or-office-2016-clic

    I used the May 14 v1904 build 11601.20204 for Office 2016 (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/OfficeUpdates/update-history-office-2019).  After I reverted, I disabled auto updates. This replaced v1907 build 11901.20218 Click-to-run.

    It also kept all my preferences, so I didn't have to set up my environment to my liking again.

    I'll check back periodically to see if I can begin updating again, but right now functionality trumps all else.

    --Karen

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