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
    2019-10-04T08:27:52+00:00

    I have been informed by the Office team that a bug report has been filed and that the issue is being investigated.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-10-07T19:11:03+00:00

    Excellent news, Stefan. Thanks for the update.

    Thanks to everyone above since I last checked in, especially RobinRice1. I've taken to using the style pane to find italics, highlight it in yellow and then reapply italics so I can find it again using my familiar method. Like Robin, I could always find ALL instances of italics or bold simply by using Ctrl+i or Ctrl+b in the Find box.

    (PS. Rohn007, I know Paul Beverley, the macro man. We're both in the SfEP.)

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-10-11T09:19:17+00:00

    Here is a copy of one of the macros I use:

    Sub FindBoldItalics()

        Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

        With Selection.Find.Font

            .Bold = True

            .Italic = True

        End With

        Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting

        With Selection.Find

            .Text = ""

            .Replacement.Text = "^&"

            .Forward = True

            .Wrap = wdFindContinue

            .Format = True

            .MatchCase = False

            .MatchWholeWord = False

            .MatchWildcards = False

            .MatchSoundsLike = False

            .MatchAllWordForms = False

        End With

        Selection.Find.Execute

        If Not Selection.Find.Found Then

            MsgBox ("No bold italics found in Document")

        Else: End If

    End Sub

    This was initially created by recording my actions using the Word inbuilt Macro Recording facility.

    It has been a while, but I think I tidied it up a bit after that.

    I'm sure that someone proficient in VB could make it much shorter and/or neater, but it works for me!

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-10-11T17:01:54+00:00

    Thanks.

    .

    That looks reasonable. The macro recorder does tend to include a lot of extraneous carp <sic>, but I think the options you've left in this macro are reasonable, to ensure any find options are reset.

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