Updating styles in footnotes

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stevenpa - 01 Feb 2007 08:27 GMT

Word 2003

I am in the process of updating the styles in a Word document to include
more eye-pleasing typefaces. I open up the Formatting and Styles... sidebar
and change all of the custom styles to fonts, sizes, etc. that I want, and
they all update accordingly except for footnotes. Actually, I can't access
any styles for footnotes in the sidebar, and so have to go to Format
->Style... from the menu bar.

After calling up the Styles dialogue, I am given three options for
footnotes: Footers (paragraph style), Footnote Reference (character style),
and Footnote Text (paragraph style). I've updated them all accordingly, but
Word refuses to update the styles in the document itself! What I have to do
is highlight each footnote reference in both the body and the footer as well
as the footnote text in the footer and apply the updated style individually.

My question is: why does the body update without a hitch, but the footnotes
don't? And how can I solve this? I've tried creating a new template,
working with the existing template, and nothing works.

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stevenpa - 01 Feb 2007 08:36 GMT

I should also mention that the footnotes are linked to words that are in a
two-column table, so I have one footnote reference in the table, one footnote
reference in the footer at the bottom of the page (not in the table itself),
and then of course the footnote text in the footer too.

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Stefan Blom - 01 Feb 2007 08:46 GMT

If you are sure that the Footnote Text style is applied to the
text of footnotes, then I'd say that their font formatting has been
overridden. You can reset it to style by selecting the text and
pressing Ctrl+SpaceBar. If there are many footnotes, you may not want
to do this manually. Instead, you could use Find and Replace: For
"Find what," specify the Footnote Text style and for "Replace with,"
specify the Default Paragraph Font style. Click Replace All.

Then run the following macro to re-apply the Footnote Reference
character style to the footnote numbers:

Sub ApplyFnRefStyle()

Dim f As Footnote
For Each f In ActiveDocument.Footnotes
f.Reference.Style = wdStyleFootnoteReference
f.Range.Paragraphs(1).Range.Characters(1).Style = _
wdStyleFootnoteReference
Next f

End Sub

Signature

Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

> Word 2003
>
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> don't? And how can I solve this? I've tried creating a new template,
> working with the existing template, and nothing works.

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stevenpa - 01 Feb 2007 09:35 GMT

> If you are sure that the Footnote Text style is applied to the
> text of footnotes, then I'd say that their font formatting has been
> overridden.

Yes, I agree. In the styles dialogue (i.e. Format | Style), the Footnote
Text style has clearly been updated to Arial, for example, but the text in
the document itself is still Times, again for example, until I manually apply
the style to each footnote individually in both the footer and main text area.

Where the style is being over-ridden is anyone's guess. I've made new
templates that strip all the styles off, copied the text into a new document
based on this stripped down template, chosen Apply Destination Formatting,
and the footnotes still require manual updating where the main body text does
not.

> You can reset it to style by selecting the text and
> pressing Ctrl+SpaceBar. If there are many footnotes, you may not want
> to do this manually. Instead, you could use Find and Replace: For
> "Find what," specify the Footnote Text style and for "Replace with,"
> specify the Default Paragraph Font style. Click Replace All.

This helped greatly, thanks.

> Then run the following macro to re-apply the Footnote Reference
> character style to the footnote numbers:
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
> End Sub

Again, very helpful! I don't normally use Macros, but this is one I'll be
using in the future for sure!

I don't want to close this topic just yet (maybe in a day or two) in case
there are other less Macro-related fixes for my query.

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Stefan Blom - 01 Feb 2007 11:43 GMT

The macro is needed because clearing direct font formatting also
clears the character styles (unfortunately); I believe Word 2007 has
more options.

If you need assistance with the macro, see
http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm.

Paste Options are described at
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/HowPasteOptionsWorks.html (not
sure that it sheds any light on the particular problem you are
describing, though).

Signature

Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

> > If you are sure that the Footnote Text style is applied to the
> > text of footnotes, then I'd say that their font formatting has been
[quoted text clipped - 38 lines]
> I don't want to close this topic just yet (maybe in a day or two) in case
> there are other less Macro-related fixes for my query.

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