Word: Italicise numbers inside parentheses

In a comment on another blog post, one of my readers asked if there was an easy way to find all numbers and change them to italic. Well, there is (Option 1 below), but there was a further complication—some of these numbers were a range separated by a dash, and some were separated by commas. For example:

• (123456)
• (1-4)
• (1, 5)
• (1, 5, 12)

I couldn’t find an easy way to do this all at once, but you can do it by running several wildcard find and replace routines. If someone else has an easier or more elegant solution, please add it in the comments.

NOTES:

• Tip: Just in case anything goes wrong, make a copy of your document before you start and do this in the copy until you are satisfied it works as you expect.
• Tip: Only click Replace all once you are confident that it works.
• Numbers are whole positive integers—no decimals, no ordinals, no negative numbers.
• ‘Dash’ is the standard hyphen character on the keyboard, NOT an en or em dash, or a minus symbol.
• All find and replace routines are done with Use wildcards turned on (Ctrl+h, click More, select Use wildcards).
• Tip: Copy the find strings from here and paste into your Word find field.

Option 1: Find all numbers and change to italics

1. Find: ([0-9])
2. Replace: \1
3. When in the Replace field, click Format > Font, and choose Italic.

Note: EVERY number in the document will be italicised.

Option 2: Find whole numbers only inside parentheses and change to italics

For example: (123456), (789), (23)

1. Find: \(([0-9]@)\)
2. Replace: ^&
3. When in the Replace field, click Format > Font, and choose Italic.

Note: The numbers AND their surrounding parentheses will be italicised. See Option 6 for how to change the parentheses back to normal text.

Option 3: Find whole numbers separated with a single dash inside parentheses and change to italics

For example: (12-3456), (7-89), (2-3) [there are NO spaces before or after the dash]

1. Find: \(([0-9]{1,9})(-)([0-9]{1,9})\)
2. Replace: ^&
3. When in the Replace field, click Format > Font, and choose Italic.

Note: The number ranges, the dashes, AND their surrounding parentheses will be italicised. See Option 6 for how to change the dash and the parentheses back to normal text.

Option 4: Find 2 numbers separated by a comma and a space, inside parentheses, and change to italics

For example: (1, 2), (25, 67)

1. Find: \([0-9]{1,9}, [0-9]{1,9}\)
2. Replace: ^&
3. When in the Replace field, click Format > Font, and choose Italic.

Note: The numbers, the comma, the space, AND their surrounding parentheses will be italicised. See Option 6 for how to change the comma, space, and the parentheses back to normal text.

Option 5: Find 3 numbers separated by commas and spaces, inside parentheses, and change to italics

For example: (1, 2, 3), (25, 67, 345)

1. Find: \(([0-9]{1,9}, [0-9]{1,9}, [0-9]{1,9})\)
2. Replace: ^&
3. When in the Replace field, click Format > Font, and choose Italic.

Note: The numbers, comma, spaces, AND their surrounding parentheses will be italicised. See Option 6 for how to change the commas, spaces, and the parentheses back to normal text.

Option 6: Change all commas, spaces, dashes, and parentheses back to normal text

1. Find: ([, \(\)-]) (Note: there’s a space after the comma in this string)
2. When in the Find field, click Format > Font, and choose Italic.
3. Replace: ^&
4. When in the Replace field, click Format > Font, and choose Not Italic.

 

PowerPoint: Remove alt text but preserve links when creating a PDF

One of my clients had a problem. When he created a PDF from his PowerPoint presentation, the PDF displayed the auto-generated alt text for each picture in his slide deck. He’s a geologist so some of the alt text for the images of rock formations was just totally wrong (see the second half of this blog post for examples of weird auto-generated alt text: https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/word-adding-alt-text-to-images/). He didn’t want the alt text, but found that if he turned off the accessibility features in Acrobat, his URL links no longer worked either. He wanted the links, just not the alt text.

I figured out how to achieve what he wanted (i.e. no alt text and clickable URL links) in PowerPoint before you create the PDF. Here’s how:

1. Click on an image in PowerPoint.
2. Go the the Picture Format tab.
3. Click Alt Text in the Accessibility group. This displays the Alt Text panel, populated with some auto-generated text that Microsoft THINKS describes the image.
4. You can now either:
   • click the Mark as decorative checkbox, OR
   • clear the auto-generated alt text and leave it blank (or type a space).
5. When you’ve finished your PowerPoint slide deck, go to File > Save as Adobe PDF. The resulting PDF should preserve any URLs you have, and there should be no alt text for any of the images you cleared it from.

A note about alt text: Alt text is absolutely necessary for those with vision issues who use screen readers to navigate computers, website, and digital files, so if your images are of something (and not just decorative), it’s best to add your own alt text describing what’s in the image. Certainly NEVER leave it up to Microsoft’s artificial intelligence as could get some very weird results.