The first important thing to understand when you are using this function is that font attributes and paragraph attributes are internally separate. In Help+Manual the two sets of attributes are combined in paragraph styles. However, every paragraph style actually has two sets of attributes with the same name: one set of font attributes and one set of paragraph attributes.

For this reason the Replace Styles dialog has two modes, which must be used separately: One mode for the font attributes and one mode for the paragraph attributes.

Since paragraph styles consist of both font and paragraph attributes this means that you must always perform two passes with Replace Styles to apply paragraph styles: One to replace the font attributes and one to replace the paragraph attributes. Since paragraph attributes are sometimes not "unique" – many different paragraph styles may share the same paragraph settings – you may find it easier to apply paragraph styles manually in some cases.

The search is performed for all the attributes in the left column (Search for Format/Style:). All the replacement or removal operations are only performed on text that returns a perfect match for all the options in the left column.

This also applies for the operations defined by the Inline Formatting replacement settings in the right column (Remove inline formatting etc). The operations will only be performed on text that matches the search arguments in the left column perfectly!

When you open the Replace Styles dialog the search settings in the left column are set to the attributes of the text at the current cursor position. If you perform your search without changing anything in the left column, any operations you choose in the right column will only be performed on text that precisely matches the text attributes at the current cursor position. This includes both the style name (which is just one attribute among many) and all the other attributes.

For example, if the cursor is in the normal text of a paragraph styled with StyleA, any operations will only be performed on text styled with StyleA. Text within StyleA  text with different formatting will be ignored and will remain unchanged, unless you use a "fuzzy" search (see below).

Remember that the name of a style is just one attribute among many – setting the style name in the search column on the left just searches for text associated with that style name. It too can be switched to (Any) to create a fuzzy search, and doing this does not change any of the other attributes.

Changing the style name at the top of the column does not change any of the other attributes, it only changes the style name.

So you can search for the same attributes in combination with the style name (to find a style that has already been applied) or without the style name (to find text that you want to restyle or integrate in an existing style).

The search is precise for attributes in the left column that are specified explicitly. The search is "fuzzy" for attributes that are specified as (Any).

For example, if you want to include inline-formatted text that has a different font in your search you must set the Font Face setting in the left column to (Any). Then the search will find both text matching the main style and text with a different font.

The same applies in the same way to all other attributes.

The Remove inline formatting options in the right column are only performed on inline formatted text that precisely matches the settings in the left column.

Example:

For example, suppose you want to remove all manually-applied italics from your body text, which is Arial 11 points. You use several different body text styles and you want to remove manually-applied italics from all of them. You need the following settings:

This will remove all manually-applied Italic formatting on any Arial 11 text with any style, but it will not remove any other inline formatting because only Arial 11 Italic matches the search.

If you change (any text) to Normal for the Font Style Name in the left column then only formatting in paragraphs formatted with Normal will be changed.