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Find/replace: Unstyled bulleted lists with styled paragraphs?

Anonymous
2011-12-01T15:26:22+00:00

I have several large documents that all have the same problem.

There are many bulleted lists in these documents, but the author did not use styles to create these lists. Instead, they simply used the bullets and numbering feature.

So, the style of the lists is just "Body Text." I want to change them all, preferably using find/replace, to "List Bullet." I should also mention that most of the rest of the doc is also in "Body Text" style, so I can't just change the style.

I am also looking to do this with numbered lists as well, but the styles need to have different names for my purposes. I considered using the indentation settings, but both are indented identically.

I know how to use the advanced find/replace options to change uniquely formatted text, for example, to a style. But I do not see an option to select bullet items for replacement.

Thanks in advance for your help!

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Suzanne S Barnhill 278.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2011-12-01T17:51:21+00:00

Instead of using the Find and Replace dialog, try using the "Select all x instances" feature of the Styles pane. You will need to enable the Styles pane Option to display bullet and numbering formatting. When you do this and click in a bulleted paragraph, you should be able to find a listing for "Bulleted..." Right-click on that and choose "Select all x instances." When they are selected, you can then apply the desired style.

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Anonymous
2011-12-01T19:04:10+00:00

Try using the style inspector to check all the styles applied to the bulleted text.  It's available as a small button at the bottom of the styles pane if you click the small launcher button in the bottom right-hand corner of the Styles group on the Home ribbon (it's the middle button with the magnifying glass on it).  If you click this button and then click on the bulleted text it will show you the text level and paragraph level styles.

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  1. Suzanne S Barnhill 278.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2011-12-02T15:37:01+00:00

    I'm glad you got it figured out. I did test it on my own machine, but I probably didn't explain it clearly enough.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-12-01T16:40:21+00:00

    Thanks for the reply.

    Unfortunately, the List Paragraph style is not present in the document. All bulleted and numbered lists have the "Body Text" style, as does the rest of the actual body text.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-12-01T15:46:27+00:00

    Have you tried searching for the List Paragraph style and replacing with the List Bullet style?

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