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kyriosity
Inspiring
March 3, 2019
Question

Find and Replace with Nested Styles

  • March 3, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 1566 views

I don't usually bother with nesting styles, but I've got a textbook project with tricksy formatting, so I've made some basic folders to help corral the approximately one zillion styles I've got going on. But I've run into an oddity: I wanted to change a character style wherever it appeared in a certain nested paragraph style, so I selected both in the appropriate dialog box, but when I get back to the main find and replace dialog, it's got the folder name rather than the paragraph style name in the find field. When I temporarily pulled the style out of the folder, I was able to complete the search, but should that be necessary?

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    2 replies

    kyriosity
    kyriosityAuthor
    Inspiring
    March 3, 2019

    Hmmm...another find and replace oddity I've come across a couple of times tonight. All of the options in the dialog box are grayed out: I can't find next, change all, anything:

    Michael Bullo
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 3, 2019

    You might want to try resetting your InDesign preferences. If you don't know how, follow this link and scroll to the section "Restore all preferences and default settings"...

    Set preferences in Adobe InDesign

    Michael Bullo
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 3, 2019

    I've created and nested in groups a series of both Paragraph and Character Styles and I've had no problem selecting them within Nested Styles or Find/Change. I don't fully understand your problem. Could you elaborate a little more on your problem and/or post some screen captures.

    kyriosity
    kyriosityAuthor
    Inspiring
    March 3, 2019

    OK, here's an example.

    Say I want to find instances of the italic character style in the Body Text -- Answers paragraph style, which is nested in the Body Text folder:

    I make those selections in the dialog box:

    But when I click OK, what shows up in the Find Format field is a search for Paragraph Style: Body Text:

    And of course there isn't even a paragraph style named that, because a folder can't have the same name as a style.

    Only when I drag Body Text -- Answers outside of that folder...

    ...does it show up correctly in the Find Format field:

    Michael Bullo
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 3, 2019

    Here are my results. Everything seems ok at my end but I can see what you are talking about with yours.

    Have you checked to see if everything functions correctly? I suspect it might be and that that Find Format field has merely truncated the text. Your Paragraph Style and Group both start with the same text.

    I think you might be ok.