Something strange is occurring with smallcaps. Because it's happening in documents created or edited on another computer that I don't have access to, I have some trouble figuring out what's going wrong.

What happens is this: on the other computer, in an older version of Word (to judge from the screenshots it's Office 2003), they are applying the regular smallcaps command to some words in the text, using the relevant button on the toolbar.

When I open the file on my computer (in Office 2013), those words don't actually have the smallcaps attribute. Instead, the text is in capitals (which you shouldn't do if you apply smallcaps, you should leave the text in lower case), but its font is 2 points smaller than that of the surrounding text. So it actually *does look exactly like* smallcaps. Only it isn't.

The files I get from "the other side" are *.doc, not docx.



Now... is there some issue (e.g. with doc/docx conversion, or something between Office 2003 and 2013) that can cause this to happen automatically?

Or do I have to assume the toolbar button they're using isn't actually the real smallcaps button, but maybe invokes some macro or styles they're not aware of?

Without actually seeing the problem document, it can be difficult for anyone to diagnose the issue. Can you attach a document to a post with some representative data (delete anything sensitive)? You do this via the paperclip symbol on the 'Go Advanced' tab at the bottom of this screen.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I'm sorry, I can't. It's a copyrighted text. I'll first try and find out what exactly is happening on the other computer.

Yup – find out what they're doing and tell them not to :-}

Well, regarding small caps, it turns out there is also something I would like to tell Word not to do. And that is lose the small caps attribute when I copy text from one document to another.
When I do this, I usually choose the setting "merge layout" (or whatever it's called in English). I though this would adapt the font type and size to that of the target document, but retain features such as bold and italics and small caps.
It turns out it retains bold and italic, but ONLY that. Small caps is lost, for whatever crazy reason.
Of course I find this out at a stage where I now have to go through thousands and thousands of word to find the small caps again, because I've already done minor edits on this pasted text, I can't revert to the old version.

Fiddly, and in an ideal world shouldn't be necessary :-{ Have you considered using a character-style instead of some 'what Word thinks best' button? I can't promise this would make it easier for your successors, but it might.

That is not an option. I'm not concerned about formatting the text for a printout for my own purposes or anything. This has to go to a publisher, and they want a no frills document, nothing with styles (which I invariably find too complicated to go into anyway). Just plain text, at most a TAB here and there, italics and bold, is okay. And smallcaps.
But for some reason smallcaps seems to be a stepchild to italics and bold. Whereas the latter are always "remembered" when pasting (unles you paste without any formatting), smallcaps isn't.

It's so weird: I find now that I can retain smallcaps if I choose "use target styles" when pasting. I'm assuming that means the text assumes the outward look of the target text into which I'm pasting.
So this works, smallcaps are retained.
But... the target text has 12 point letters, and the pasted text has 14 point letters. If the option is called "use target styles", then why doesn't the text receive a 12 point attribute?
It's no big problem, it just seems so illogical or counterintuitive.
I have few problems with Word, but this pasting behaviour is really weird.

You previously said the document had been created in a different word process, which you speculated might have been Word 2003. I very much doubt Word 2003 was involved, since if you apply the small-caps attribute to a document in that version, the attribute and formatting are faithfully carried over when the document is opened in Word 2010, for example. Of course, if someone had round-tripped the document through, say a conversion to PDF then copied the text back to Word, the small-caps attribute would have been lost and you'd end up with normal caps in a smaller point size. You'd also get the same result if the document had been produced in WordPad, for example, since WordPad doesn't support small-caps and one would have to simulate them by using caps in a smaller point size.

As for your concern about losing a small-caps attribute when copying between documents, that presupposes the source actually has that attribute AND that your paste options are not set to preserve the source formatting. But, in that case, what you'd then be liable to end up with is not caps in a smaller font but no caps (i.e. normal upper/lower-case text) - which is what you see when you copy content with small-caps into WordPad.

Finally, you say:
None of those attributes is possible in a plain text file. A plain text file is just that - text with no formatting of any kind. The most you'll end up with is upper/lower-case text and tabs (tabs being characters in their own right). You'll have no indents, bold, italics, underlines, differences in font size or small caps.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Poor choice of words on my part. I meant plain in the informal sense, not in the computer sense of *.txt. I just meant the typesetters probably don't want all kinds of styles to be used. Or even if they don't mind, it's no use employing styles since they'll disregard it. The only attributes carried over are bold & italics &c.
Unfortunately, they hardly ever provide clear guidelines (e.g. as to indentation).