Jumping to Styles in the Task Pane

Word 2002 introduced the concept of the "task pane" to Word. This area appears at the right side of your Word program window, and provides an area where you can quickly access task-related information. One use of the task pane is related to formatting. If you choose Styles and Formatting from the Format menu, Word displays a myriad of formatting choices--most of them style-related--in the Styles and Formatting task pane.

To those familiar with older versions of Word, the Styles and Formatting task pane essentially replaces the Style dialog box, which was accessible when you chose Style from the Format menu. There is an interesting difference, however. In the Style dialog box, you could press the first letter of any style's name, and that style would then be selected in the Styles list. Not so in the Styles and Formatting task pane; here you are required to use the mouse to display and select the style you want to use or modify. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way around this change.

There is a different approach you can take, however, if all you want to do is apply a style. The Style drop-down list on the Formatting toolbar still allows you to press the first letter of a style name to jump to a style. All you need to do is click on the Style list's drop-down arrow (to display the style list) and then type a letter.