Help changing the font size in a bunch of documents.

[Joe Camacho]

For a final assignment in my civil process law class, I need to make a clean notebook with all my class notes, a work I already did about all the types of civil trials and a bunch of formats...

I have a cd with the formats, and while my plan is just to burn it and make some sort of bag for the cd, I want to print at least 20 of the most important formats, which are in all kinds of fonts and sizes.

Is there any way to just change the size and font of a bunch of word documents?

[franpa]

the format painter in ms word?

[Joe Camacho]

the format painter in ms word?

Will that work with various documents? without opening each one on Ms Word?

[LobStar]

from the sounds of it, it might be best to just write a script to concatenate all of your documents into 1 file (I wrote a windows script to do that for my job but you will probably need to edit it, its quite simple to edit though), then open it in open office and define some styles, finally, highlight and select headers, and body text styles appropriately, much better than the format painter. I know your not looking for a lot of work, but I honestly don't think any software exists that is smart enough to do what you want automatically.

edit:
merge.vbs:

Code: Select all

Const wdPageBreak = 7 

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
objWord.Visible = True
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add()
Set objSelection = objWord.Selection

Set FileList = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    ("ASSOCIATORS OF {Win32_Directory.Name='E:\mergetest'} Where " _
        & "ResultClass = CIM_DataFile")

For Each objFile in FileList
    objSelection.InsertFile(objFile.Name)
    objSelection.InsertBreak(wdPageBreak)
Next

obviously, change "Win32_Directory.Name='E:\mergetest'", put the directory with all of your document files and only your document files, I think it will try to open EVERYTHING. Hope it helps

[funkyass]

why not write a script to apply the format changes(in essence, strip the formating) and then print it for each document?

[Joe Camacho]

Ah, sad.

That sounds too complicated for me. I guess I'll sleep even less this finals week.

Thanks for helping though.

[odditude]

While this isn't exactly automated, it's pretty simple to do and WOULD save you some time...

Open up one of your documents, and then start Word's macro recorder. Select all, make all the global changes (i.e. font, font size, page setup, etc) and then stop recording. Then, for each document you open, all you'll need to do is run your macro to duplicate the changes you made.

Hope this helps, or at least gives you an idea that WILL work for you.

[Joe Camacho]

Hmmm, that sounds like a plan, as long as I open all the documents in a cascade type of setup, and I just go running the macro and closing the window, will the macro carry from the document after closing it?

[LobStar]

you could easily modify the script I posted to do just that, or, run the script I posted, select all, set the font, size, color, and formatting to be the same. Keep in mind, running that script as is, will put all the documents in one document.

[odditude]

Hmmm, that sounds like a plan, as long as I open all the documents in a cascade type of setup, and I just go running the macro and closing the window, will the macro carry from the document after closing it?

When you create a macro, it gives you the option of where you want it saved. As long as you save it to the default template, it'll be available any time you're using Word.

Also, you can bind the macro to a key combination, making your cascading idea even better. You could (for example) multi-select the documents in Explorer, hit Enter to open them all at once, then hit (your macro key combo), Ctrl-S, Ctrl-W repeatedly to apply the changes to the current document, save the document, and then close it, automatically focusing the next document and getting you ready to lather, rinse and repeat.

If you wanted to cut it down even further, you could make a second macro consisting of macro 1, save, close... although that might be more trouble than it's worth unless you have a LOT of documents.

Hope this helps!