Viewing Local Style Suggestions

You can view the places in your project where you have used local formatting. MadCap Analyzer suggests that you replace these instances of formatting with existing styles in your stylesheet that match the formatting that you have applied manually. This is different from a new style suggestion in the following way: With a new style suggestion, the properties in the tag do not match an existing style exactly; therefore, Analyzer suggests that you create a new style. On the other hand, if you make formatting changes that happen to result in an exact match to all of the properties in an existing style, Analyzer suggests that you replace the formatting with that style (rather than creating a new style).

Local formatting is simply a way to change the look and feel of content directly so that the changes are applied only to that specific content (as opposed to applying the changes throughout your project via the use of styles). Many easy-to-use tools are provided in Analyzer for editing and formatting topics directly in the XML Editor to give them the look and feel you want, without having to know XML at all. Simply open the topic that you want to format, and use the tool that suits your needs best. For example, if you want certain text to be bold, you can highlight the text and click the Bold button in the Text Format toolbar. This direct approach to formatting topics (sometimes called "inline" formatting) can be very attractive because it is quick and easy. However, it is recommended that you use style classes instead of local formatting whenever possible. Although local formatting is very convenient in the short-term, using style classes is much more efficient and can save you a great deal of time in the long-term.