Hey, I have a question about how to maybe do something in Word, and hopefully someone here will know how to do it. I do not use Word, like, at ALL, and so if this is an easy thing, so be it, and if it is impossible, then oh well. I have written a document online, over time, it ended up being around 140 pages long. The formatting protocols of the online location where it was written used a certain kind of structure to create an italicized word. It was like this: if I wanted to italicize a word, I had to surround the word with asterisks on both sides. For example, in this sentence, the word *elephant* would be italicized because it had the asterisks around it. Now however, I am wanting to use the document in Word, and I have no idea how to do away with the asterisks and make those words simply be italicized in Word. Do any of you know how to do something like that? Some kind of function that would seek out every word surrounded by asterisks on both sides, get rid of the asterisks, and make those words italicized? Can it even do that? Thanks, crossing my fingers..
Go to the find and replace option. Under find put * and under replace leave it blank. Should do the trick
Wouldn't that simply erase all the asterisks? What I need to do is make all the words surrounded by asterisks italicized too. That's the whole point.
So, you do not know how to delete the astericks? or you do not know how to italicize? To italicize, you just need to highlight the word and press ctrl + i. to remove the astericks I would assume just backspace or delete would work.
It is a 140 page document, filled with italicized words. They are italicized ONLY in the online location where I wrote it. In the Word document, they are regular words with an asterisk on each side of the word. There are literally HUNDREDS of them in the document. I am trying to find a way to make Word automatically take every word in the document with asterisks on either side and make it italicized. Even if it doesn't remove the asterisks - I can do that afterward. It's not that I don't know how to erase, or how to italicize a word. Duh lol. I just don't want to have to do it manually hundreds of times if there is some way to automate it.
Nero, Go to Format menu. Then select Autoformat. In that little window that pops up, select options. There, you should see a little box for *bold* and _italics_, depending on your version. I think if you use autoformatting with this box selected, then all of your asterisked words will become bold. If your version looks like mine, then my suggestion: (1) Find and Replace all * with _. (2) Use the autoformat function on the entire document. (3a) voila? (3b) shake fist and curse the name of B-Bob.
There's probably a simpler way but this is what I would do. Do a find and replace and change the asterisks to another special character. (like a dollar sign or a pound sign) Then do another find and replace and click the "More" button and then select use wildcards. Then click format at the bottom and then click font. Once you are in the font menu, select italics and then close the box. For the find and replace sections, type the following. (I'll use $ as the replacement for the * symbol) For find, type in $$*$$ For replace, type in $$*$$ This will convert all of the words that are surrounded by two $ signs to italics. Once you do that, do another find and replace and replace the $ signs with blanks.
That worked! Awesome! All Hail The Great Hero B-Bob! Much rep to you Sir, you just saved me hours of editing! Thank you thank you! (shakes fist and praises the name of the mighty B-Bob!)
I can see it's already been answered, but I am a SEARCH&REPLACE master... in Dreamweaver, Word, and anywhere else that uses that feature with regular expressions: With word, you can also select EVERY word that is BOLD and has asterisks using Search and Replace with options. You can do "special" and "formatting" options with your search and choose "Italic" under the "Font Format" options to replace to make every word "*word*" be italicized in your "Replace With" option like so: Before you choose "Format": Spoiler When you click "Format" then "Font...": Spoiler Before REPLACING ALL: Spoiler This should work with all future *fixes*. Good thing you did it already.
I don't like Word, but I just wrote a 300 page book in it as kind of a default, so I learned a few things. I would think others like Swoly would know more and would trust their judgment moving forward. But overall, I've been surprised by Word, in a good way. My book has to have copious end notes, and the end note feature is surprisingly robust. It really keeps track during cut and paste, and you can format it all sorts of ways, by section/chapter, etc. Glad that worked, Nero!
Gotta give you some props SwoLy! You don't always play nice but you sure are willing to help in these situations. You're a regular professor in interwebz and such... Spoiler Profesor Jira-SwoLy... ....... ....... .......
^ These things are TECHNICAL... not a matter of opinion. That's where I excel. You see my plight now, Mr. BamBam? :grin: LOL @ Rubén Aguirre's famous character. Thank you, sir. EDIT: Hadn't seen your note, B: I'm constantly writing technical documents in Word. At times, I have to GOOGLE the answer and at other times, I just mess with the keystrokes and the shortcuts and I notice some keystrokes do wonders. For example, I learned by mistake that CTRL+Enter did a Page Break. It's like your mind/brain/intellect, man... the more you use it, the more you know your way around it and to make it your own and to work better for you... give me a buzz/ring/message if you run into more problems. I like helping out with these technical things and if I don't know it, I'll google it in the way I think it's called in the "Word" world. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/introduction-1-40-RZ102673168.aspx?CTT=1§ion=2 Search and Replace dialog box: CTRL+H Change Case toggle from lower to UPPER to Sentence Case: SHIFT+F3
I have a question regarding Excel and automation. Nobody has been able to even provide an answer or suggestion yet. Want to give it a shot?
I don't know if it's FORUM 'etiquette' to hijack Señor B-Bob's thread. Could be worth its own thread, or an "Excel Help" thread would be in order. I said that's where I 'excel', not "I am a guru of Excel." But... sure, I could try. I use WORD a lot more than Excel, but I like a challenge.
Since the original question was already answered, here is mine regarding Excel 2010 and automation. I have a VB Script that will open a specified Excel file, refresh all, and then save it. It works fine but some files are setup to publish reports in MHT format on Save. Problem that we have is when you have a file that publishes a report on save you get a prompt asking if you want to publish. You can say yes and check the option to not show that again then the script will run fine for 'current user' only. Otherwise the refresh script can't accept the prompt. This wouldn't be an issue if I was running it for myself. I could just open the files first, do a one time manual save, accept the publish prompt and that's it but we want to run this on our corporate job scheduling system and we can't access those servers for each new excel file which is set to publish that needs to be opened up once manually and saved. Is there a way to enable always publish option for ALL users? Or is there a VB Script that can set that option on its own?
It looks like you need to disable some sort of prompt or change an option either in the VB script or in the application or server that runs the script, then run the script. Something like these guys right here, but not necessarily these... although they might help you: Code: Application.EnableEvents = False Application.DisplayAlerts = False ActiveWorkbook.Close SaveChanges:=False Application.DisplayAlerts = True Application.EnableEvents = True Am I on the right track? Try the DisplayAlerts to 'False'. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/aa175241(v=office.11).aspx
My script is listed below. Setting the alerts to false makes the script 'hang' because the alert is there but not visible so it just sits there and waits. I haven't been able to find an action to automatically set options for and accept a specific alert
