Blanket clearing of overrides on one para style without affecting others in the same document

Question

I keep running into this situation but only intermittently, so haven't quite had the opportunity to think it through to a solution. There may actually be a simple answer.

For some reason, sometimes my imported text will retain overrides -- or, at least, a "plus" sign will show next to the style name in the palette. Often, when I clear it -- so far, para by para -- I see no changes. It bugs me to see the + sign, though; makes me wonder ....

In many instances, I think it would be safe to clear the overrides for a particular para style -- e.g., body text -- in one fell swoop, but I can't just Select All because there are other para styles intermingled throughout the doc, and I may not want to clear overrides on all of them. (I do a lot of special spacing, for instance.)

Is there a way to clear overrides on one specific para style, throughout a document, without "selecting all" or having to go para by para, so as to avoid those I don't want to clear overrides on? Hope this isn't too convoluted a question, and thanks for any thoughts. (Sorry if it turns out to be simple and something I should have thought of on my own!)

SJRiegel · Accepted Answer

You can do this using Find/Replace.

In the Text section of Find/Replace, leave the Find What and Change to fields blank

In the Find Format field, enter the Paragraph style that you want to clear of overrides.

In the Change Format field, enter the same Paragraph style. This will re-apply the style everywhere it was used before, clearing all manual overrides. Any text within those paragraphs that was changed using a Character Style will retain its Charcter Style.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Answer

Here's a trick to see what might be causing the "+" sign.

Click your cursor in some affected copy. Click the top right menu of the Styles to define "New Paragraph Style"... and look at the section Style Settings in the dialog that comes up.

Normally, it would show just the name of your current Style + usually a "next style" setting, if you have one.

However any other overrides will show past that. In my example attached, my Body Copy style uses the English (Canadian) dictionary, but I changed some words in the paragraph to the English (USA) dictionary, which will cause the "+" in the Styles palette.

You can see this in the Style Settings of my example.

I would then do a Find/Replace to search for the dictionary and change it to the one I want.

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