To remove local formatting from a paragraph

[Combs, Richard]

Avraham Makeler wrote:
 
> >> Yes, you end up importing the formats back into itself.
> 
> Oh dear...

Why "Oh dear"? Best practice is to not use format overrides (at least, paragraph format overrides; some bohemian types play fast and loose with the character formats). Importing from the current doc's catalog effectively removes overrides, which is a good thing. 
 
> >> To change just one paragraph, I would try and determine what was done to
> modify that particular paragraph by comparing the settings,
> 
> Comparing the settings ... and eyeballing field by field, tab by tab ...
> Oh dear... so much for hi-tech...

As you've since been told, this was bad information. No such painful process is necessary. You just apply the format from the Catalog.
 
> >> using the paragraph Designer (Ctrl+M) of a modified and unmodified
> paragraph.
> 
> And how can I be sure that any particular paragraph has remained
> unmodified?

In the status bar, there is an asterisk next to the paragraph format name. 
 
> Thinking ... And just suppose all paragraphs have all actually -- ALL --
> been modified? No way back?

What do you mean by "way back"? You can remove all the overrides and restore all paragraphs to their defined format by importing paragraph formats from the current doc, as noted above. That gets you back to the place you should get back to. :-)
 
> (And btw, simply clicking Apply in the Paragraph Designer does not work.
> Seems that FM notices that the paragraph already has that style and so
> doesn't apply anything. So the Paragraph Designer should offer a 'Force'
> option, IMO.)

That's because the Designer dialog changes to reflect the formatting at the current cursor position. If the cursor is in a location where the defined format was modified, and you click Apply without first changing any settings, you're simply applying what was already there. 
 
> This is all so convoluted that the simplest way I have found seems better
> than all the others: just change the paragraph style to any other style,
> and
> then change the paragraph style to back to what you want. That works.
> 
> Anyway, if this is the way things are, Word beats FM hands down on this
> point.

No, it's not convoluted -- you got some convoluted advice early on, and you're not fully comfortable with the FM paradigm and tools. But once you learn those, you'll find that FM encourages and facilitates the use of defined formats (paragraph, character, and table), and it's much easier to consistently format a document -- with no local, ad hoc formatting -- in FM than in Word. 


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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