Can't change style of single letters on the fly, HELP

  • Thread starter Thread starter L F Braun
  • Start date Start date
L

L F Braun

Hi,

Surely there's got to be an easy answer for this, but
I've had no luck getting at it. When I type, I often
need to boldface or italicize ONE letter within a word on
the fly with CTRL+I or CTRL+B (toggling). But Word 2003
stupidly won't let me do that anymore, and it's really
frustrating the living heck out of me! How do I undo
Word's desire to italicize or boldface an ENTIRE WORD
every time I hit CTRL+I or CTRL+B, without having to
perform the highly interruptive act of highlighting and
changing styles after the fact? I'm at my wit's end!

thanks

LFB
 
On the Edit tab, clear the check box for "When selecting, automatically
select entire word." I can't guarantee that this is what is responsible for
such infuriating behavior, but it could be related.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Suzanne

That did indeed work. Thanks so much for the brainstorm--it was the obvious choice in retrospect, but because I was not actually selecting text I did not think it applicable

Hooray

thanks agai

L F Brau
 
HI LFB

If you don't want the option (to automatically select entire Word) turned
off all the time - because it is a really useful feature - you can override
it for odd occasions by holding down the ALT key whilst select the
character. (The ALT key overrides many other Word automations too.)

--
Terry Farrell - Word MVP
http://www.mvps.org/word/


Suzanne,

That did indeed work. Thanks so much for the brainstorm--it was the obvious
choice in retrospect, but because I was not actually selecting text I did
not think it applicable.

Hooray!

thanks again

L F Braun
 
Didn't know that (and indeed it is useful), but FWIW, I wish they just
hadn't changed the default somewhere between Word 97 and Word 2002: it used
to be that even with that option disabled, if you just clicked *in* a word
(selection collapsed to a point) and applied formatting, it would be applied
to the whole word. Now I double-click the word if needed, though the way
formatting is applied to the space/punctuation after the word is usually the
opposite of what I want.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Suzanne

I'm not sure why they changed this either. It seems more logical the way it
worked before. I find that 99% of the time if I want to select something
like

Here:

I want the word and colon selected - but Word doesn't include the colon in
double-clicking on the word. An additional Shift + Right-Arrow button is
required. So I may as well have stayed with the keyboard and Shift+
Right-Arrow keyed the whole word and colon!

Terry

Didn't know that (and indeed it is useful), but FWIW, I wish they just
hadn't changed the default somewhere between Word 97 and Word 2002: it used
to be that even with that option disabled, if you just clicked *in* a word
(selection collapsed to a point) and applied formatting, it would be applied
to the whole word. Now I double-click the word if needed, though the way
formatting is applied to the space/punctuation after the word is usually the
opposite of what I want.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
In Publisher, there are separate toggles for "When selecting, automatically
select entire word" and "When formatting, automatically select entire word."
But even in Publisher I suspect that following punctuation is not included
(and often should be), whereas the following space is (and almost always
shouldn't be).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Now, just to make things even more interesting, it turns out that the "When
selecting, automatically select entire word" setting in Word 2002 and above
actually appears to behave like the "When formatting, automatically select
entire word" setting in Publisher. This at least means that I can regain my
preferred behavior from previous editions, but it means that the option is
misleading and almost pointless. <sigh>

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Sorry, false alarm. What I'd forgotten is that when this kicks in is when
you try to select portions of two adjacent words. You can select part of the
first word, but as soon as you try to select part of the second word, the
whole word is selected. <sigh>

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Suzanne

That's the way it is!

Terry

Sorry, false alarm. What I'd forgotten is that when this kicks in is when
you try to select portions of two adjacent words. You can select part of the
first word, but as soon as you try to select part of the second word, the
whole word is selected. <sigh>

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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