While delving into the details of Office document properties, we found some curious anomalies.
They aren’t major but worth keeping in mind if you use document properties in Word documents.
When you enter a document property it should just add the text and the same document property will show the same text in each place it’s in the document.
But the formatting should be totally separate. The same document property can look very different depending on the formatting applied.
Formatting can only be applied across the entire content control/field. Even if you select part of the property, your formatting changes will work for the whole property.
And that’s not the only case … no pun intended.
Change the case from the Home | Font menu in a document property and it gets applied to all instances of that property.
That looks like a bug but it’s not. Whenever you change the content of the property, those changes are automatically applied elsewhere. Even though the Change Case menu is on a ‘formatting’ ribbon section, it’s actually changing the typed text.
Compare that with the ‘Small Caps’ or ‘All Caps’ formatting options (Home | Font | Font dialog | Effects) which are true formatting applied onto the base text.
If you want to change the case of property text, use Small or All Caps rather than the Change Case option on the Home tab. The related tip is the make the original property text in lower or Mixed case so you have the option to format as All Caps if needed.
