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Hack 55 Clean Out Linked "Char" Styles

Documents created or edited in Word 2002 or
2003 have a nasty habit of sprouting hidden character styles that are
hard to see, let alone eliminate. This hack shows you how to lead a
"Char-free" life with
Word.

In most programs that offer style-based
formatting (such as InDesign, FrameMaker, or QuarkXPress), if you try
to apply a paragraph style to just part of a
paragraph, the entire paragraph is modified to
reflect the new style. But in Word, things aren't so
simple. In older versions of Word, when you apply a paragraph style
to only part of a paragraph, the paragraph retains its original
style, but the selected text takes on the character formatting of the
paragraph style you tried to apply. That introduces a lot of
direct formatting into documents, which can make
them difficult to modify and maintain.

Apply paragraph styles only with all or nonenever someof the paragraph selected to avoid this "feature."

Starting in Word 2002, rather than just applying the character
formatting of the paragraph style, Word creates a
new, hidden character style based on the
paragraph style and tacks the word
"Char" on the end, such as
"Heading 1 Char."

Ostensibly, this is an improvement of the behavior of earlier
versions of Word. Rather than changing Word to behave like other
programs (and thus encouraging the conscientious use of character
styles), Microsoft changed Word to behave in a strange, new,
andsurprise!poorly documented way. Because the Char
styles are linked to the paragraph styles on
which they're based, if you later change the
paragraph style, the character style also changes.

6.6.1 Spotting Char Styles

To see these bizarre styles in action (assuming you are using a newer
version of Word), open a new document and drop in a few paragraphs of
placeholder text [Hack #14] .

Now select a word or two within one of the paragraphs and apply the
"Heading 1" style to the selection.
Check your styles, either using the Task Pane or the Styles pull-down
menu on the Formatting toolbar. See anything amiss? Well,
that's a trick question. There are two things amiss,
but you won't see them right away on the Styles
pull-down menu or the Task Pane:

Word created a new character style based on the formatting properties
of the "Heading 1" style.

Word has not told you about this new style, which, as
you've discovered, doesn't appear
with the other styles in the usual places.

Now, hold down the Shift key and click on the Styles pull-down menu
on the Formatting toolbar. Scroll down to the
"H" section, as shown in Figure 6-8, and you'll see the new
style. You can also view the linked style from the Reveal Formatting
Task Pane.

Figure 6-8. The elusive Char style

You can work in a document for weeks and never notice these styles.
However, if you send your document to someone using an older version
of Word that doesn't support these
"linked styles,"
they'll appear right away in the Styles pull-down
menu and the Styles and Formatting dialog.

Once you cut and paste the styles around your document, among
different documents, and back and forth across different versions of
Word, something even stranger happens. They evolve. Mutate. Fester.
Until your document is rife with monstrosities like the following:

Body Text Char Char, Body Text Char1 Char Char, Body Text Char Char

Sometimes the "Char" extension even
gets added to some of your paragraph styles. Does the fun ever stop?

Unfortunately, you can't prevent Word from creating
these styles. And even if you still use Word 2000, these styles
will show up in documents worked on by Word 2002
and 2003 users.

The situation gets even stranger when you try to delete these styles.
In Word 2000, you at least stand a chance. Since 2000
doesn't have linked styles, you can rename or delete
them as needed, just like any other style. But in Word 2002 and
2003the source of these bizarre stylesyou
aren't so lucky. When you try to delete
"Heading 1 Char," the silence is
deafening. Nothing. Not even a dialog admonishing your efforts.

So maybe you should try a little VBA? Running the following code in
the Immediate window [Hack #2]
would seem to be a solution:

ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 1 Char").Delete

When you run the code, the dialog shown in Figure 6-9 greets you. But take a look at your document
againthe style's gone.

Figure 6-9. Deleting the linked style generates a runtime error

What's going on here? For a clue, try the following
code in the Immediate window:

ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 1").Delete

You get your old friend, Runtime
Error 4198.

Remember, the styles are linked. If you change
one, you change bothand that goes for deletion as well.
However, you can't delete a built-in style, which is
why you're greeted with Runtime
Error 4198 (and why nothing
happened when you tried to delete it from within Word).

So what if you repeat this with a Char style not based on one of
Word's built-ins? Then there's
nothing stopping Word from deleting both styles
and removing all of the formatting from any text that used
them. Yikes! Fortunately, there's a fix.
With the code in this hack, you can quickly clear out any linked Char
styles in your document, without losing any other styles.

6.6.2 The Code

This code will delete any character style with the word
"Char" in it and remove the word
"Char" from the name of any
paragraph style. Since deleting a linked style also deletes any style
it's linked to, the link must first be broken (which
is accomplished by linking it to, ironically, the Normal style).

This macro deletes character styles from your document. You will lose any formatting applied to text using the deleted character styles. If you want to keep the character formatting, see the upcoming section Section 6.6.4.

Because Word 2000 (and Word 97) doesn't have a
LinkStyle property for styles, if
you're using that version of Word, this code will
not run unless you comment out one line, as noted within the code.
Note that there are two procedures here: the main
DeleteCharCharStyles macro and a supporting
function named SwapStyles. Both are needed for
this hack to work.

Sub DeleteCharCharStyles( )
Dim sty As Style
Dim i As Integer
Dim doc As Document
Dim sStyleName As String
Dim sStyleReName As String
Dim bCharCharFound As Boolean
Set doc = ActiveDocument
Do
bCharCharFound = False
For i = doc.Styles.Count To 1 Step -1
Set sty = doc.Styles(i)
sStyleName = sty.NameLocal
If sStyleName Like "* Char*" Then
bCharCharFound = True
If sty.Type = wdStyleTypeCharacter Then
On Error Resume Next
'#############################################
' COMMENT OUT THE NEXT LINE IN WORD 2000 OR 97
sty.LinkStyle = wdStyleNormal
sty.Delete
Err.Clear
Else
sStyleReName = Replace(sStyleName, " Char", ")
On Error Resume Next
sty.NameLocal = sStyleReName
If Err.Number = 5173 Then
Call SwapStyles(sty, doc.Styles(sStyleReName), doc)
sty.Delete
Err.Clear
Else
On Error GoTo ERR_HANDLER
End If
End If
Exit For
End If
Set sty = Nothing
Next i
Loop While bCharCharFound = True
Exit Sub
ERR_HANDLER:
MsgBox "An Error has occurred" & vbCr & _
Err.Number & Chr(58) & Chr(32) & Err.Description, _
vbExclamation
End Sub
Function SwapStyles(ByRef styFind As Style, _
ByRef styReplace As Style, _
ByRef doc As Document)
With doc.Range.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = "
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.Style = styFind
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.Style = styReplace
.Replacement.Text = "^&"
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End Function

The second procedure, SwapStyles, is there because
of a scenario that often occurs when documents that have these linked
styles go back and forth between different versions of Word. Often,
what started as one paragraph stylefor example,
Sidebarmay have mutated into two paragraph styles, such as:

Sidebar

Sidebar Char Char

In that situation, if the code just tries to remove the
"Char" strings from the second
Sidebar style, an error will be raised because the name Sidebar is
already taken. With the SwapStyles procedure, all
the text formatted with the second style is modified and formatted
with the first, and then the second style is simply deleted.

6.6.3 Running the Hack

After you put both procedures in the template of your choice [Hack #50],
and either run it from the ToolsMacroMacros
dialog or put a button for it on a menu or toolbar [Hack #1].

This code affects only styles with the string "
Char", including the leading space. If you plan to
use this macro to clean your documents, you should avoid deliberately
using the string " Char" in any of
your styles. However, feel free to begin a style
name with Char, as in
"CharacterStyleNumberOne."

6.6.4 Hacking the Hack

If you want to delete the linked Char styles but retain the character
formatting on the text, use this version of the code. It includes an
additional procedure, StripStyleKeepFormatting,
that removes the character style applied to the text but retains the
formatting defined by that style. Again, if you use an earlier
version of Word, you'll need to comment out the line
that unlinks the character style, as noted in the code.

Sub DeleteCharCharStylesKeepFormatting( )
Dim sty As Style
Dim i As Integer
Dim doc As Document
Dim sStyleName As String
Dim sStyleReName As String
Dim bCharCharFound As Boolean
Set doc = ActiveDocument
Do
bCharCharFound = False
For i = doc.Styles.Count To 1 Step -1
Set sty = doc.Styles(i)
sStyleName = sty.NameLocal
If sStyleName Like "* Char*" Then
bCharCharFound = True
If sty.Type = wdStyleTypeCharacter Then
Call StripStyleKeepFormatting(sty, doc)
On Error Resume Next
'#############################################
' COMMENT OUT THE NEXT LINE IN WORD 2000 OR 97
sty.LinkStyle = wdStyleNormal
sty.Delete
Err.Clear
Else
sStyleReName = Replace(sStyleName, " Char", ")
On Error Resume Next
sty.NameLocal = sStyleReName
If Err.Number = 5173 Then
Call SwapStyles(sty, doc.Styles(sStyleReName), doc)
sty.Delete
Err.Clear
Else
On Error GoTo ERR_HANDLER
End If
End If
Exit For
End If
Set sty = Nothing
Next i
Loop While bCharCharFound = True
Exit Sub
ERR_HANDLER:
MsgBox "An Error has occurred" & vbCr & _
Err.Number & Chr(58) & Chr(32) & Err.Description, _
vbExclamation
End Sub
Function SwapStyles(ByRef styFind As Style, _
ByRef styReplace As Style, _
ByRef doc As Document)
With doc.Range.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = "
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.Style = styFind
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.Style = styReplace
.Replacement.Text = "^&"
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End Function
Function StripStyleKeepFormatting(ByRef sty As Style, _
ByRef doc As Document)
Dim rngToSearch As Range
Dim rngResult As Range
Dim f As Font
Set rngToSearch = doc.Range
Set rngResult = rngToSearch.Duplicate
Do
With rngResult.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Style = sty
.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Execute
End With
If Not rngResult.Find.Found Then Exit Do
Set f = rngResult.Font.Duplicate
With rngResult
.Font.Reset
.Font = f
.MoveStart wdWord
.End = rngToSearch.End
End With
Set f = Nothing
Loop Until Not rngResult.Find.Found
End Function

For an alternative method, check out [Hack #98] .