Highlighting Text (Word 2003)

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I have an existing document where I need to high light and then italicize the text that appears between two underscores. For example, the text may look similar to this _Today Is_ Tuesday. “Today Is” needs to be italicized.

Can anyone help me with this?

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You could do it in two passes, first using a wildcard find-and-replace to italicize the _WholePhrase_ and then using a second search to de-italicize the underscores. A macro might be cleaner, but would take longer to write.

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Sound like we are on the right tract, but could you please give me a step by step. I’m not very proficient with Word.

Thanks

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In the Find and Replace dialog, you will notice a button labeled “More.” Once you click this, you will have access to the necessary features: Wildcard searching, and the format find/replace features.

Start with a “test” find. Tick the Use wildcards checkbox In the Find what box, try _*_ — that should match anything between two underscores. Find several times to see whether it is working the way you like. If it does, go to the Replace tab. In the Replace with box enter the code for “found text” which you can insert using the Special characters pop-up. Then press Ctrl+i to force the change from “anything” to italics. Try a few replaces to see whether it is working correct and, if you like the results, Replace All.

To unitalicize the _ characters, turn off wildcards and assign the appropriate formatting to the Find what and Replace with boxes. I believe that Ctrl+i toggles to “italic”, “not italic” and “no setting,” but if that doesn’t work, you can use the Format button to access the Font dialog and choose whatever you like.

The above is a rapid sketch, so I might have forgotten something, but hopefully you can work it out from here. Does it help?

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This replacement worked for me:

Edit > Replace

Use Wildcards
Find What: (_*_)
Replace With: 1
Format Font Italic

StuartR

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And if you want to get rid of the underscores, use _(*)_ in “Find what”.

_([!^13]@)_ would be a bit “safer”…
I tend to avoid the * wildcard because it can match lots of text. [!^13]@ limits the match to one paragraph.

Klaus

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