Formatting issue - hyphens/em dashes

Question

All my em dashes are appearing as ### in a field for some reason. I had it set to have hyphens automatically convert to em dashes. Is there anyway to change this back without having to go through my entire document (300+ pages) and manually change each one?

Answer 1

While Andrea's solution will certainly work, the one I offered will replace the SYMBOL fields with the actual em dash character, which I think will be more satisfactory in the long run. You must have field codes displayed in order to use that Replace sequence, as the code ^19 is the opening field delimiter (the thing that looks like {, an opening brace character).

This will replace the character found with an em dash in the Default Paragraph Font (your SYMBOL field specifies Times New Roman as the font, meaning that your dash might not match surrounding text if it is in a different font). The only reason for using this SYMBOL field would be that the Default Paragraph Font is one that doesn't contain the em dash character, and those must, these days, be vanishingly rare.

Answer 2

Press Alt+F9 to display all the field codes in your document.  Now press Ctrl+H to display the find and replace window and enter

\s 12

in the find what box and

\s 12 \u

in the replace with box.

After running the replace, press Alt+F9 to turn off display of field codes, press Ctrl+A to select all and then press F9 to update all the fields.

Answer 3

Well, this is bizarre, to say the least. You can try using Replace to search for ### and replace with ^+ (which is the code for an em dash). What sort of field is involved?

Answer 4

This is posted in the Word forum (with Office 2010 selected), and there's no indication it was moved from anywhere else. I'm guessing you're posting through the bridge?

Answer 5

On Sun, 5 Feb 2012 22:38:10 +0000, AaronGudmunson wrote:

All my em dashes are appearing as ### in a field for some reason. I had it set to have hyphens automatically convert to em dashes. Is there anyway to change this back without having to go through my entire document (300+ pages) and manually change each one?

In what program (and version of that program)?

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Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
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