I am doing a Replace, where I want to, say, replace the letters "Bm" within the brackets as it is in my doc, as shown below... replace the "Bm" with "Am.". Note that all (including) the brackets are in superscript format versus the surrounding words (although, it doesn't show it as superscript when I paste in this post) and the letters within the brackets are colored red. When I do a 'replace,' it does it as expected except it does not retain the red color. By default, Word should retain formatting, so, what gives?



blah {Bm}blah

When you click the replace box you must go to the bottom left corner and click "more" and then "format" then "font" and adjust the color etc. The basic replace command utilizes a standard format when doing a replace and it has nothing to do necessarily with what is in your document

By default, the Find/Replace operation basically takes whatever format it finds for the first character in the string and applies its format to the whole of the replacement string.

The approach suggested by dougmadden will colour the braces as well.

To limit the formatting to a specific part of the replacement string would require a macro.

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

David I believe my response works because he is not replacing the bracket simply the letters within them.

I don't know who David is, but I do know your 'solution' won't work when the braces are part of the Find expression (so as to prevent other instances of Bm being found) - it changes the braces as well. Try it for yourself.

If the OP was doing a Find/Replace on only the 'Bm', the issue wouldn't arise - the 'Am' would adopt the same colour as the 'Bm' without any need to specify the replacement colour. You can confirm that too.

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