Find <text> Apply <tag>

[Fred Ridder]

Copy Special can be a very useful function, but you need to be aware of it's limitations. The biggest limitation is that it copies *all* the formatting characteristics of the exemplar rather than just the one or two characteristics you want to change. 

For example, if you select an instance of the company name in a heading and make it italic (either directly or by applying a character tag) and then do Copy Special, the formatting that you will be pasting throughout your document might be 20 pt bold italic Helvetica instead of your body font, which is perhaps Times 11 pt.  If you do the Find & Replace globally, there will be a lot of cases where you apply a lot of undesired formatting as well as the specific formating you want.
For the circumstance you describe, I agree with other posters that a formatted variable is the best approach. Whenever you insert the variable, it will appear in the default font plus the formatting for the character tag that you've applied via the variable definition.
-Fred Ridder

Replying to Avi, Roger Shuttleworth wrote: 
> To apply the character format:
> 1. Create the format and apply it to a text range.
> 2. Select the formatted text and go to Edit->Copy Special->Character format.
> 3. Do a search and replace for your company name. In the Change field, select By pasting. This applies the character format that you copied
> previously.
> 
> As for applying italics without a character format, I think most would agree that this is a Bad Thing. It's certainly not allowed in our office. I
> don't think you can automate it.