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cindyh23311374
Known Participant
December 10, 2023
Answered

Change bullet size in document

  • December 10, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 8043 views

I have a document with hundreds of bullets separating short phrases. The phrases are assigned a paragraph style, but not the bullets. I now wish to change the bullet size. Using find/change didn't work. I tried entering "•" and also "^8" in the find field, enter the current font size (12.5pt) in find format and 10pt in change format and and it kept telling me "no replacements made" or "not found." What am I doing wrong?

 

Thanks in advance for any tips.

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Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

And, okay, on re-reading your post, that standard answer may not be on target. If the "bullets" you are referring to are just inline characters, you can only change them with the find/change process you're already using.

 

I would create a Character Style for them, and assign it using Find/Replace. Set F/R to "GREP."

 

For 'Find," cut and paste one bullet into the field, so that there's no guessing which glyph might be in play. (If appropriate, set Find to "BODY" text or whatever Paragraph Style holds this text, to limit it to that text alone.} (The standard code for a round bullet is ^8, by the way, and in GREP, it's ~8.)

 

In Replace, you can paste the bullet again, or use the "Found Text" code, $0. (The latter will put the same character in; you could also substitute another character if you like.) Click the T/magnifier icon and set it to the new Bullet character style.

 

Run Change All. All of your inline bullets will now be assigned the Character Style, and you should be able to tweak it to your heart's content. (Pro tip: make it bright magenta or such, and review to make sure all the bullets are so tagged. Manually tag or fix any that got missed, for whatever reason. Then set the Character Style color to whatever it should be.)

2 replies

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPressCorrect answer
Brainiac
December 10, 2023

And, okay, on re-reading your post, that standard answer may not be on target. If the "bullets" you are referring to are just inline characters, you can only change them with the find/change process you're already using.

 

I would create a Character Style for them, and assign it using Find/Replace. Set F/R to "GREP."

 

For 'Find," cut and paste one bullet into the field, so that there's no guessing which glyph might be in play. (If appropriate, set Find to "BODY" text or whatever Paragraph Style holds this text, to limit it to that text alone.} (The standard code for a round bullet is ^8, by the way, and in GREP, it's ~8.)

 

In Replace, you can paste the bullet again, or use the "Found Text" code, $0. (The latter will put the same character in; you could also substitute another character if you like.) Click the T/magnifier icon and set it to the new Bullet character style.

 

Run Change All. All of your inline bullets will now be assigned the Character Style, and you should be able to tweak it to your heart's content. (Pro tip: make it bright magenta or such, and review to make sure all the bullets are so tagged. Manually tag or fix any that got missed, for whatever reason. Then set the Character Style color to whatever it should be.)

    Peter Spier
    Peter Spier
    Community Expert
    December 11, 2023

    This could also be handled automatically with either a nested style or GREP style as part of the paragraph style so you don't need to go back anr run Find?Change every time you edit the text...

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Brainiac
    December 12, 2023

    Nested style can work -- none up to one bullet, then the style through 1 bullet. Repeat as may times as the maximum number of bullets you are likely to have in a paragraph. A bit unwieldy to set up, but probably less overhead than the GREP style.


    I can't find any way to make a nested style work — the entire concept is "do [this] through/to [some marker character]". The list of marker characters is fixed. If there's a way to use a bullet as that marker, I am unable to find it. At best, it seems you'd have to assume the bullets are bracketed with en- or em-spaces:

     

     

    Whereas a GREP style requires only this:

    ...and done.

     

    I'm not experienced with either trick, though. Am I missing something?

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Brainiac
    December 10, 2023

    Create a character style for the bullets. Assign it the font, size, color and other characteristics you want for just the bullet, not the content text. (Pro tip: if you diddle around with different characters and fonts, some adjustment of size and baseline shift will often make the result look better.)

     

    In the Paragraph Style for the bullet, assign that style under "Bullets and Numbering."

     

    In that same menu, choose the bullet character you wish to use, from any available font. (The associated glyph panel will show the base font; if you change the font with the character style, it will be remapped to that font. It's usually best to choose the glyph in the Bullets menu and not mess with the font in the style, but you can do either.)

     

    That should give you complete control of the bullet itself for that Paragraph Style. The content text — color, font, spacing, etc. — will remain controlled by the rest of that style.

     

    Further pro tip: the bullets will change with tweaks to the Character Style if you have Preview checked there — very useful for fine-tuning and trying weird stuff. 🙂

    C
    cindyh23311374Author
    Known Participant
    December 10, 2023

    Does it mean I have to assign/apply the character style individually hundreds of times before I can modify the style? The phrases are not actual bullets, but set up like this:

     

    "phrase number one • phrase number two • phrase number three…" inside a paragraph.

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Brainiac
    December 10, 2023

    Nope, see below. I misread your actual need.

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