Pages 7.0.1: select all examples of one style?

Hi Yellowbox,

Unfortunately not.

The imported file creates a new style or styles for the imported paragraphs (e.g. Default* - though mysteriously, in other test docs it named all the "regular" paragraphs Default 1*, or Paragraphs*, instead.) But these NEW styles don't appear on my drop-down list of styles, so I can't go to that style name on the list and redefine it.

Fiddling around with this, I thought for a second that I had it: The small + to right of "Paragraph Styles" enables you to add the new (e.g. Paragraphs*) style to the list, and then, if you go to delete it, this brings up a box asking which (existing) style you want to replace it with:

_____________________________________________

A:

B:

C:

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Bravo ... only, this does exactly what every other method I've tried does: changes ONE instance of the style!

Still stuck. And puzzled - I strongly dislike Word, and would much rather use Pages, but manipulating all instances of a style has been an (easy to find) feature of Word since about 1997. And I can't do this project in Pages without it.

This was a Word doc originally, with all styles correct. The point is, the lack of this feature in Pages makes it essentially impossible to move a complex document into Pages and (as I wanted to) quickly be up and running using Pages instead of Word. I just wish someone at Apple would consider the possibility that, from the pov of someone wanting to switch, removing this (rather simple) feature was a deal-killer of a design decision.

Hi Viking,

Unfortunately, if I understand you right this is no different from choosing an instance of the incorrect style, going to the style list, and choosing a different style. Either way, I'd have to do that many hundreds (possibly thousand) of times. I need the software to automatically pick out all instances of a given style - doing it manually just isn't practical. Most word processing programs have a "Select all instances of this style" or similar command. That's what I need.

Wow. What were the designers thinking?! I guess it's back to Word. Ironically, I've always thought the worst of many bad things about Word was the way Styles are set up ... but it lets you do this. Thanks for letting me know.

Hi Yellowbox,

I think this does answer my original question as stated - so thank you. Unfortunately it turns out to be of limited help in the case of importing!

The importing-from-Word process both creates "placeholder" style names that are not on my list (e.g. "Paragraph*"), and treats paragraphs with wildly varying styles (e.g. plain text, headers, and centered italic quotations) as having the same new style name. So using "Redefine from selection" changes the selected paragraph and those like it to the right "look," but (a) it still leaves them named with a style that's not in my style list - and which I don't really want to add to the list, but can't anyway, even in order to then change it - and (b) redefines all the paras that had a different (correct) formatting to the new one.

Thanks for your help - but without being able to say "Pick each and only paragraphs with exactly this formatting, and then both rename and change them to [Existing Style]," I think I've concluded that the game's not worth the candle.