Styles with the same characteristics disappear

Hello,

I don't have the gift of foresight at the moment to know what you've done! :)

To answer your last question, I can tell you that many of us have asked ourselves the same thing.

First of all, the translation "default font" is a poor translation, as in American English, the menu says "Default Paragraph Font," which means the font for the paragraph style (and not the default font for the document).

From there, we can imagine the difference, namely that when we choose "Underlying Properties," the font should be based not on the paragraph style font, but on the font used in that paragraph, and thus the font directly modified.

Except that it doesn’t work, and we get exactly the same result. This question has been bothering me for a long time, and I can say that I've done numerous tests since version 2002...

Here's a conversation that might interest you but basically says in English what I've just said to you in French!! ;)
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/default-paragraph-font-vs-underlying-properties/05bd8f18-26d4-4cc3-9f72-ada1dd8ab457?auth=1

m@rina

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At least half of the users ask a question and never come back. Sometimes I wonder why I continue to respond...

Hello,

How does it disappear?
Is it no longer displayed? Or does it no longer exist at all, and the red style is replaced by the Normal style?

If it's just a display issue, check here:
https://faqword.com/index.php/word/environnement/1016-ou-sont-les-styles

m@rina

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At least half of the users ask a question and never come back. Sometimes I wonder why I keep answering...

Thank you Marina,
The styles still exist. I can see them in the styles pane (when I view as recommended or in other views). But when I search (in the find and replace function), there is nothing. I get the message no results.

Hello,

If you do a search, and nothing is found, the conclusion is that the style is not used in the document.

When you say "I used to make them black"... how did you do that?

The best solution is not to do a search, but simply to modify your style. It's called "red character", ok... You modify it, it keeps its name of course, but the character is black, thus not visible. When you want to switch back to red, you modify the style again.

m@rina

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At least half of the users ask a question and never come back. Sometimes I wonder why I keep responding...

That's what I was doing. Modifying the style and changing it to black. Then I would re-modify it to change it back to red. And it had been working for years.

(I would search, just to navigate faster from one place where this style was applied to another, or to easily spot all the places where this style was located).

I had done the same thing with a different color than the paragraph text: for example, changing the character style to blue instead of black, and I could easily change it back to red without any problem.

I tested it again by doing the same thing, switching from red to black, and it works (by closing and reopening the doc) and I don't have this issue that prevents me from reverting to the style.

I just wonder what I could have done to make it not work again (luckily I had a backup copy! This document has 750 pages!)

Related question: Is it preferable to set underlying properties or default font? I don't quite see the difference...

Thank you!