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. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-09-30T22:53:10+00:00

    I can confirm that "Complex scripts" as well as other settings in the Font and Paragraph dialog boxes will be added if you add certain languages (right-to-left languages, I believe). You don't even have to enable those languages (that is, you don't have to install full support for them); as long as they have been added to the list of editing languages the additional features will be available in Word.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-10-01T07:59:55+00:00

    But bottom line is the same, whether with old documents, or newer documents -- we now must use F/S font dialog box for setting up searches.

    Robin Rice

    Great bit of analysis from Robin Rice, getting down to the core issue.

    This issue forced me into creating 3 macros (variations of the example in my previous post) with buttons added to my Quick Access Toolbar, one each for Bold, Italic and Bold & Italic.

    It would appear that setting up the search using VBA in a macro is the equivalent of using the font dialog box.

    I now have 'one-click' access to each search, and to be honest, I don't know why I didn't do it earlier.

    They are so handy I created others for Superscript, Subscript and Underline.

    J B Morrison

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-10-01T10:20:49+00:00

    JB:

    Since you've already spend the time to create and test them would you mind sharing them here?

    I'll offer you a "trade". This free download was created by a professional document proofreader and editor. It is a (huge) collection of macros he uses. He has a few macros that search for bold, alone and with other attributes.

    ! Computer Tools for Editors (and Proofreaders) (macros)http://www.archivepub.co.uk/book.html

    by Paul Beverley, LCGI

    This is a freely distributable set of computer tools (macros) for use with Word, programmed by and for editors and proofreaders. *(Writers and authors will also benefit from using some of these macros because they have to read and edit their own texts to try to make them more consistent.)*There are over 400 macros in the book, with more being added. Here’s a list of the twelve Word tools (macros or groups of macros) that save me most time as an editor and enable me to produce a better quality of work.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-10-01T17:00:21+00:00

    Hi, J B Morrison -- Yes!  Me too!  I am also (along with Rohn007) interested if you would share those macros you created -- but, unfortunately, I don't have anything to trade.  I am only an amateur-macro-writer-wannabe, and thus far have only barely tipped my toe into the vast sea of VB macro possibilities.  (I noted your macro suggestion several posts back, and thanks for that.)

    Robin Rice

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