How do I change style in Word doc based on first character of paragraph?

June 25, 2013 6:07 PM

I have a long (260 page) Word 2010 document, on Windows, and I'd like to tidy it up a bit - it originally comes from the web. It consists of normal paragraphs, and quote paragraphs. Each quote paragraph starts with a ">". Is there a way I can automate changing the style on the quote paragraphs?

So this:

> blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

> blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

would become this:

> blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

> blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

The document is the wonderful Blizzard forum CYOA/IF game 'You Awaken in Razor Hill', in case anyone wants a copy when I'm done. Alex Levinton's website got hacked and the forums have been wiped, so I'm wanting to make a more readable version for archival purposes.

posted by Sebmojo to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: For a one off I would...
1. Replace every ^p> with ^t> which will put any quoted paragraphs on the same line as the preceding paragraph, but separated by a tab
2. Select all the text and convert it to a table using tab as a separator. You should now have a two column table, with some of the second columns containing the quoted text.
3. Select the second column by clicking just above the top most cell.
4. Make that second column bold.
5. Convert the table back to text.
6. Replace every ^t> with ^p which will split the lines back and strip out the >'s

This should be pretty close. I'm on my ipad so I can't try it for you.
posted by MCTDavid at 6:32 PM on June 25, 2013

Best answer: I think you can do this a bit simpler than MCTDavid's solution:

1. Hit Ctrl+H for Find and Replace
2. In the Find box put "^p>" (without the quotes, but all of those literal characters)
3. In the Replace box, leave it empty but click More > >
4. Click the Format button at the bottom of the new options and select Style, then choose a paragraph style to apply (or create a new one).
5. Replace All

I just tested this in Word 2007 and it applied the paragraph style to the whole paragraph for all of the selections.
posted by camcgee at 9:48 PM on June 25, 2013