Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Making Bookmarks Bold.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 13, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
If you have quite a few bookmarks in your documents, you may want to highlight them, perhaps by making them bold, so that you can see them better. Word provides a direct way to highlight bookmarks, all you need to do is choose Tools | Options | View tab, and then make sure the Bookmarks check box is selected. The result is that any bookmarks in the document are surrounded by [brackets]. These don't print, but only appear on-screen and are very helpful in visually locating the bookmarks.
If you actually want to make the bookmarks bold, one approach is to create a special character style to be used for bookmarks. You could set the style to be bold, and then apply it to all your bookmarked text.
You can also use a macro to make your bookmarks bold. The following macro will step through each bookmark in a document, and make its text bold:
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here:
Sub BookMarks2Bold()
Dim bm As Bookmark
Dim tx As Range
Set tx = ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(wdMainTextStory)
For Each bm In tx.Bookmarks
bm.Range.Bold = True
Next
End Sub
If you later want to turn off the bold attribute for bookmarks, you can do so by changing True to False in the line that actually does the property assignment.
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1355) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Making Bookmarks Bold.
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