Yes, I was aware of that. I looked into changing embedded pics into externally linked ones (there was a couple of forum threads dealing with that), but I thought now that I saved out all my images with HTML save (which gives you the formatted rich text plus the images in corresponding folders), I wouldn't need to make that change, only identify where the inline shapes are and mark those places just anyhow (a piece of bold text would do now that I know I will have gotten rid of all the bold by the time I get to this part of the drill).

See, I don't need the pictures, only reference their places within the next (usually in the text I make a comment; 'see attached image'; a cue I could use when I manually go about populating my files with images again), because once I save out as plain text, I say goodbye to all HTML formatting and attached images.
But before the save happens, I would need some "I was here" to help me with re-attaching the pics in the new environment. That's the whole idea. If you save out or render the text somewhere else as HTML and the images are gone or the respective paths have changed, at least you'd get an empty box inline to see this is where a picture used to be. Not with txt (which I needed to reformat for markdown).

(In the meantime, I am looking at other stuff that gives me a headache; I cannot believe automating a change of fonts is so difficult in footnotes; Recorded Macro/Selection method did it once and no more.)

Unless you've used non-standard fonts in your footnotes, all you need to is modify the Footnote Text Style; you don't need to access even a single footnote.

You could also replace the images with code like:

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

On the footnote: it is not the range-wide font style that is the problem. It is the fact that I want the bold chars unbolded and put the text withing double squared brackets, like so: individual bold text > [[^&]].
I can do it one by one using FIND IN but not in bulk method running the main overhaul macro.

On the code you've given me, give me a sec on that one as I am trying to somehow salvage not having to strip all the way do to raw txt after all (problem is my HTML had become very unclean using Word and Pages alternately over the last 6-7 years; different colour codes as well).
I'll get back to you.

Ultimately I couldn't make it with HTML. There simply too many inconsistencies with the formatting. Sometimes within one longer word, there are three instances of switches off and on bold text. I don't remember formatting words to bold in three separate instances.

EDIT.
Deleted some lines here as I managed to work out the what I had in mind in a mere couple of minutes.
Of course another issue still stands: where did all the GIFs come from during my research? The problem is I cannot convert them (the PNGs are far less, thankfully) to the same number (001, 002, etc.) is it sometimes taken by a JPG that occupied an inline shape further up within the document. Anyway, I'll try to work it out outside of Word.

Cheers again

Z.