Styles missing an option

[M Black]

I create a new file with Paragraph  Style 1, Times New Roman, and Paragraph Style2, Georgia.

Character styles Pink Italic and Green Bold.

I have a Style 1 paragraph containing the pink Italic style and the Green Bold style.

Another Style1 paragraph has the pink italic style and some text which has BoldItalic locally applied.

The option are:

1. Apply Style2 to paragraphs. It does that and leaves character styles and local formatting alone.

2. Apply Style2 to paragraphs and clear character styles. It does that.

3. Apply Style2 to Paragraphs and preserve character formatting. This does nothing. It seems to think that the original paragraph Style1 is character formatting.  Since it does nothing, what is the point of it?

4. Apply Style2 to paragraphs and preserve local formatting. All character styles and local formatting are kept. This seems to be exactly the same as the first one – Apply Style2 to paragraphs.

But the one I need is missing. I need one which is Apply paragraph style to paragraphs and keep Character styles while eliminating locally formatted text. I get Word files which are theoretically in Normal style, but the author will have highlighted the whole thing and changed the font to something else, or to several different fonts here and there. I need to be able to search the original Word file and apply my character styles for italic, bold and so on. Then when I import  the file I need to be able to eliminate all local formatting while retaining the character styles. This doesn't seem to be possible currently.

 

 

[MikeTO]

8 hours ago, M Black said:

I create a new file with Paragraph  Style 1, Times New Roman, and Paragraph Style2, Georgia.

Character styles Pink Italic and Green Bold.

I have a Style 1 paragraph containing the pink Italic style and the Green Bold style.

Another Style1 paragraph has the pink italic style and some text which has BoldItalic locally applied.

These panel options are missing from the help system and are confusing.

> 1. Apply Style2 to paragraphs. It does that and leaves character styles and local formatting alone.

Applying Style 2 left the character styles alone but it overrode the local formatting for me.

> 2. Apply Style2 to paragraphs and clear character styles. It does that.

Agreed

> 3. Apply Style2 to Paragraphs and preserve character formatting. This does nothing. It seems to think that the original paragraph Style1 is character formatting.  Since it does nothing, what is the point of it?

I agree this is useless and should be removed. It applies Style 2 but then overrides it with the formatting that was already there.

> 4. Apply Style2 to paragraphs and preserve local formatting. All character styles and local formatting are kept. This seems to be exactly the same as the first one – Apply Style2 to paragraphs.

Agree, I see no difference. Perhaps with a different style setup there would be a difference but I can't think of one right now.

> But the one I need is missing. I need one which is Apply paragraph style to paragraphs and keep Character styles while eliminating locally formatted text.

For me, that is #1, just apply the style to it and it keeps the character styles and eliminates the local formatting.

Here's my test document with styles similar to the ones you described for testing.

style test.afpub

 

[M Black]

No. Apply style to paragraph keeps all the styles AND the locally applied formatting except the underline and superscript. It's as if italic and bold are not considered locally applied for some reason.

The first screenshot is the file starting out. The pink italic and the green bold are styles and the normal style is Arial 14pt. The bold italic underlined and the superscript are locally applied. I then Apply Style to paragraphs with New Normal, which is Times New Roman 12pt.

What happens is as you see. Everything becomes Times New roman 12, but only the underline and superscript have gone. The bold italic, which was locally applied, is still there.

 

 

[M Black]

I did a further test for locally applied font and font size, and that works in that "Apply style to paragraph" eliminates the locally applied FONT and SIZE, but it still retains any italic or bold locally applied.

[MikeTO]

I'm sorry, but I'm unable to duplicate this with the test document I shared with you. Perhaps you could share your test document.

Here is the before and after for my test document with a couple of additions for underline, text size, and superscript. After applying Style 2 to the selected lines paragraphs, the bold, italic, underline, and font size attributes are eliminated. Superscript is retained but that's intentional, you wouldn't want your ordinals to be reformatted.

style test.afpub < updated with this additional formatting

[M Black]

Here's my file. But it does retain the boldItalic local formatting while removing the superscript. It iOS right that it should remove locally formatted superscript. If I want to keep it I would do it with a style. Maybe ordinals are different. I don't use ordinals.

testfile.afpubtestfile.afpub

 

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, M Black said:

Here's my file. But it does retain the boldItalic local formatting while removing the superscript. It iOS right that it should remove locally formatted superscript. If I want to keep it I would do it with a style. Maybe ordinals are different. I don't use ordinals.

The reason applying New Normal to the First Normal+Bold+Underline text doesn't remove the Bold and Underline attributes is because New Normal is defined with Font Traits = <no change>. If you edit New Normal and set Font Traits = Regular then applying it will remove the individual character attributes.

With regard to superscript, my test document used Typography > Superscript instead of Positioning and Transform > Superscript so we were talking apples and oranges. But if you set Font Traits = Regular it will remove your superscript, too.

So I think you just need to play around with your style definitions a bit more.

Cheers