Hi,



How do I accomplish the following:

Write plain text (such as a succession of words) and automatically have them formatted in a customized, self-defined way.
Example:

Aurinia saxatilis L. subsp. irlandica (Gorn) Faber

to

Aurinia saxatilis L. subsp. irlandica (Gorn) Faber

I'd be willing to use a table, where to write the individual words in individual columns and have the result "generated" in a "result" column.

Any ideas ?

I tried to do that in Excel, but Excel doesn't know to copy formats when employing formulas. Maybe there is a way to do that in Word ?

In a table you can apply formatting such as bold and italics to individual columns, and text would then assume that formatting when typed in. Also, when adding rows, for example by pressing Tab at the end of the last cell in the last row, the formatting would follow. In other words, this would be a simple way to accomplish what you are trying to do. If you want more "complex" formatting, you could even apply a different style to each column.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanx, I know that, that's the reason I mentioned a table.

But how do I merge the columns of one line together as plain text and still retain the formatting ?

If I copy a row from the table, it still remains a table (with individual cells), if I copy it as unformatted text, I loose the formatting.

I would need to copy the cells somehow and loose the borders of the cell, i.e. to generate a plain text line of the table, but formatted.

This is tricky, if not impossible !

Mikey

The easiest approach would be to keep the table but hide the borders. Select the whole table and, on the Format menu, click Borders and Shading. On the Borders tab, make sure that "Apply to" is set to "Table" and then click "None."

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

True, I also thought about this solution, only I need the result in a normally (closely) spaced paragaraph. In a table, information is aligned in a matrix form.

I'm afraid I'm asking for the impossible or the utmost eccentric.

If only Excel would know to concatenate strings with KEEPING THEIR FORMATS - that would be my solution. I wonder whether Excel 2007 or 2010 is able to do that.

Thanx,

Mike

If you adjust the column widths when you hide the borders, it would like (almost) like an ordinary paragraph, but I realize of course that it wouldn't be perfect.

Merging cells, as you have seen, introduces returns (paragraph marks), so that wouldn't be much better.

I'm thinking that starting with a table and then converting it to text could work. In the process, tab characters would be added, but these can be replaced with spaces. If you could figure out what would suit you the best, maybe it would be possible to create a macro that does the (re-)formatting automatically.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

you can create your table in excel, then use an equation editor to combine all the tables into a sentence