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Creating Styles in Word

In MS Word, a style is a combination of settings, such as font, font size, color, and position. The default styles in Word include Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and Normal.

When you apply a style, all of the formatting instructions that you setup are then applied to the text in the format you have defined.

Creating a New Style

For example, you can create a style for the coverpage of a proposal and name it Cover Page. When you're writing the proposal, you can select this style and apply it to the cover page where it will display the proposal title exactly as per the style settings.

To create a new style:

  • On the Format toolbar, click Styles and Formatting.
  • In the Styles and Formatting task pane, click New Style.
  • In the Name box, type a name for the style
  • In the Style type box, click Paragraph, Character, Table, or List to specify the type of style you're creating.
  • Select the options that you want.
  • Click OK.

Testing your Style

To test that the style works, select a few lines of text and apply the style from the toolbar. If the text is not as you had expected, return to Style and Formatting, select the Style, and click Modify to adjust the settings.

Copying Styles between documents

Why cant I copy styles between documents?

Your access to the document to which you want to copy styles might be restricted in one of the following ways:

Protected except for comments or tracked changes: To remove protection, click Unprotect Document on the Tools menu. If the document is protected with a password, you'll need the password before you can remove the document protection.

Protected with a password to modify: You can open the document, but you can't save changes to it without the password.

Protected as a read-only file: You can open the document, but if you change it, you have to rename it to be able to save it.

Understanding the Style pane

Why are there so many descriptions in the Styles and Formatting task pane?

In the Styles and Formatting task pane, (near the bottom of the pane), select Formatting in use to see only the formatting that appears in your document.

If Available formatting is selected in the Show box, you may have many overlapping formats that look similar but aren't exactly the same. To provide a more consistent look and to remove overlapping formats, you can check the consistency of formatting.

Style Issues

Why does Text with the same style looks different?

Unfortunately, some text may have been formatted manually with the other formatting commands in Word. However, you can compare the formatting of two paragraphs by using the Reveal Formatting task pane.

  • From the Format menu, click Reveal Formatting, and then select the first paragraph that you want to compare.
  • Select the Compare to another selection check box, and then select the second paragraph that you want to compare.
  • Under Formatting differences, the differences between the two selections are listed.
  • Tip: You can quickly remove manual formatting and restore its style settings.
  • To remove manual formatting from a paragraph, select the paragraph (including the paragraph mark) and press CTRL+Q.
  • To remove manual formatting from characters, select the characters, and press CTRL+SPACEBAR.

Troubleshootingh Styles

Why do styles changed unexpectedly?

Automatic updating may be turned on for the style. With automatic updating, a style is updated when you make additional changes to it, so that certain elements in your document such as headings are consistent. You can turn off this setting by modifying the style.

  • On the Formatting toolbar, click Styles and Formatting
  • Right-click the style that you want to change
  • Click Modify.
  • Clear the Automatically update check box, if it s selected.

What is a Base Style?

This is the underlying style on which other styles are dependent. When you change any element in the base style, all other styles based on this style will reflect the change.

Your style is based on another style that has changed When a base style changes, it changes the settings for all other styles that are dependent on it.

For example, if you change the font in the Normal style to Verdana, Microsoft Word then changes the font for the styles used in headers, footers, page numbers, and other text based on this style.

Warning: If you don't want your style to change when you change a base style, make certain that your style is not based on another style. You can do this by following these steps:

  • On the Formatting toolbar, click Styles and Formatting
  • Right-click the style that you want to change, and click Modify.
  • In the Style based on box, click (no style).

The document is based on a template that changed If you change the styles in a template and then reopen a document based on that template, the styles in the current document will be updated, based on their new definitions in the template.

To stop this happening, from the Tool menu, click Templates and Add-Ins, and clear the Automatically update document styles check box.

The template that contains the style definitions is missing or damaged When this happens, styles in the current (i.e. active) document will revert to the Normal template s style definitions.

Your Thoughts?

What are your thoughts on this? Drop me a line at ivan at klariti dot com



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