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Participant
February 28, 2008
Question

Global change of paragraph tags

  • February 28, 2008
  • 2 replies
  • 1653 views
I need to change like a hundred heading2s into heading3s, and heading3s into heading4s. I could do a find for each para tag and manually change it to a different heading tag, but I am hoping there is an easier way. Is there a way to select say 50 pages and globally change paragraph tags?
Bill
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    2 replies

    Michael_Müller-Hillebrand
    Legend
    April 1, 2010

    Put your cursor into any heading4 paragraph and select Edit > Copy Special > Paragraph Format (or similiar).

    Next use Find/Change to search for heading3 paragraphs and change to Paste from Clipboard.

    Rick Quatros has a plug-in that allows nice UI control for that kind of operations:

    http://frameexpert.com/plugins/findchangespecial/index.htm

    - Michael Müller-Hillebrand

    Participant
    April 1, 2010

    Michael,

    Thank you so much for your response!

    The Quatros plug-in looks to be very useful, and I'm glad to know about it, but if I understand correctly, you still essentially have to step through and apply the new format to each paragraph one-by-one. (Just one click per paragraph, but still.)

    I'm working on multiple massive documents (i.e., 900+ pages each).

    The nice thing about using the Global Update Options is that I can convert, for example, every [paragraph1] definition to a [paragraphA] definition with a single click. But this process changes the [paragraph1] definition *only inside the current file.*

    So, I need to do this over and over, to numerous paragraph definitions, through dozens of chapter files.

    I would like to apply the Global Update Options to every chapter in the book simultaneously.

    In other words, "Global" in the current case means "globally within a file." I want to apply it "globally within the whole darn book."

    Apologies if I am being obtuse.

    Thanks again for your help. I really appreciate it!

    -Tim

    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    April 1, 2010

    The Cudspan Template Mapper tool will do this. See: http://www.cudspan.net/plugins/executioner.php?do=displayPage&field_tab_num=2

    Inspiring
    February 28, 2008
    Put your cursor in a heading4.
    In the paragraph designer, open the Commands menu and select Global Update Options...

    Art
    Participant
    April 1, 2010

    This works great, but only for a single file.

    Is there any way to apply the Global Update Options to every file in a book file (i.e., every chapter in a book)?

    Thanks.

    Participating Frequently
    April 1, 2010

    Tim1911 wrote:

    This works great, but only for a single file.

    Is there any way to apply the Global Update Options to every file in a book file (i.e., every chapter in a book)?

    Thanks.

    * Make a safety backup of all files that you'll work with.

    * Change the definitions in a single file, then include that file in a book with all the files that you want to change to the same new definition.

    * Save the changed file.

    * Use Shift+File > Open All Files in Book; when you do the import below, all open files will be changed as you command, but will not be saved, so you can back out of the changes, if you discover unwanted results, by closing the files without saving.

    * Select all the files in the book window.

    * Use File > Import > Formats.

    * Choose the changed file as the source; turn off all the items except the paragraph formats (and character formats if you want them changed).

    * Click Set.

    * Inspect the open files for correctness.

    * When you're sure all changes are OK, from the book window choose Shift+File > Save All Files In Book.

    HTH

    Regards,

    Peter

    _______________________

    Peter Gold

    KnowHow ProServices