Topic: Styles

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Adding Individual Styles to the Template One of the tings you can store within templates are styles. When you use styles, it is critical that you understand how they can be added to a template so you can use them in a lot of different documents. Here’s the way to make that addition. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Applying Styles Styles are one of the truly powerful features of Word. To use styles effectively, you need to understand how they affect the text to which you are applying them. In large part, the effect depends on what you have selected prior to applying the style. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Applying Styles in Word 2002 and Word 2003 How to apply styles to your document elements. Microsoft Word versions: 2002 | 2003

Applying Styles in Word 6 through Word 2000 How to apply styles to your document elements. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000

Assigning a Shortcut Key to Styles Shortcut keys are a great way to apply styles to text in a document. You can easily create a shortcut key assignment for any style you desire. This tip explains how. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Avoid Using the Normal Style The basis of almost all styles in Word is the Normal style. Here's a good reason why you shouldn't use it. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Can't Select Style Instances With the introduction of the Styles and Formatting task pane, Word allows you to select all instances of a given style in your document. This capability is controlled by a configuration setting in Word, as described in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Changing Styles Styles are a great boon to making your documents look better and making them easier to update. You can change the formatting associated with a specific style, but how you do it depends on the version of Word you are using. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Changing the Return Address Location How to change where the return address is placed on an envelope. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Cut and Paste Formatting Copy a paragraph from one document to another, and the results may be different than what you expect. The reason for this may not be clear, but is understandable if you know how Word treats styles. This tip explains the underlying principles that affect such document-to-document paragraph copies. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Default Font for Page Numbers Page numbers are a common addition to documents, and a great aid to readers. If you want to easily format page numbers, you need to understand how Word formats them. This tip explains the best ways to get the formatting you want. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Defining Styles Styles are a powerful component of Word. You use them to determine the way that your text should appear. This tip explains how you can define styles or modify existing styles. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Deleting Styles As documents evolve, so do your needs for various styles. You may create new ones and, invariably, old ones need to be abandoned. At some time you’ll want to delete a previously created style; the information in this tip makes the housecleaning chore a breeze. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Determining a Paragraph's Style in VBA Use this code if your VBA macro needs the style name applied to a paragraph. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Determining How Many Styles are Available When writing a macro, you may need to know how many styles are defined in a document. This tip discloses the techniques you can use to figure out just what you need. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Determining How Many Styles are Available in WordBasic Quickly figure out how many styles are in your document by using this WordBasic code. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95

Developing Style Families Styles are a powerful way to apply formatting in a document, or even in a series of documents. You can help organize your styles—and thereby make them easier to use—if you adopt a naming convention that separates your styles into families. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Duplicating Styles without Dependency Create a new style in Word, and that style is typically based on an existing style. Display the Modify Style dialog box, and you can see an option (Style Based On drop-down list) that allows the current style to inherit the characteristics of a style on which it is based. How do you duplicate a style without the Style Based On being set to any other style? A discussion of the ins, outs, and trials associated with this seemingly innocent question. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Fast Reformatting of a Style How to make changes to a style quickly. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95

Getting Rid of Modify Style Message When you apply styles to a paragraph, you may periodically see a message asking if you want to reapply the style or modify the style. This can be bothersome, particularly for some long-time users of Word. This tip explains how to get rid of the message and also describes those conditions under which the message is displayed. Microsoft Word versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Getting the Expected Space Before a Heading If your heading styles are designed to add extra space before the heading, you may be surprised when that extra space is not used by Word. Here’s how you can configure the program to treat that extra space as you expect. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Inserting a Cross-Reference to the First Style on a Page If you want to create “dictionary style” headings in a document, it’s a snap to do if you know how. Just format the document with styles and use the STYLEREF field in your header. Word takes care of automatically changing the header every time the referenced style changes. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Intelligently Starting a New Paragraph Using Next Style to help you set up your next paragraph. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Jumping to Styles in the Task Pane Mouse versus Keyboard selection of Styles in Word. Microsoft Word versions: 2002 | 2003

Listing All Styles in the Style Drop-Down List Want to see all the built-in styles in the Style drop-down list? Here's the quick way to do it. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Losing All Formatting in a Document Does Word keep changing all the text in your document to match the last change you made? Here's why, and how to fix it. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

No Space Before at the Top of a Page One of the ways you can format paragraph styles is to specify how much space should be added before the paragraph. How Word treats that paragraph when it appears at the top of a page depends on several factors. You can control Word’s behavior by using the information in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

One Change Affects Everything Have you ever made one formatting change in your document, only to see that change applied to all the paragraphs in the document? If so, you’ll want to read this tip, as you can fix this odd behavior rather quickly. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Preserving Style Formatting in a Merge When you insert one document within another, the styles of the receiving document can override the styles of the document being inserted. This tip explains why this happens and discusses some ways you can work around this behavior. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Preventing Styles from Changing It is frustrating to spend a lot of time working on a document, getting your styles just right, and then have those styles change without notice after someone else works with the document. Unplanned changes in styles, when two or more people are working on the document, can be due to a number of different conditions. This tip explains what you need to check (and change) to make the best of the bad situation. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing a List of Custom Styles Printing a style list is easy in Word—it is done right from the Print dialog box. If you want to print a list of your custom styles, then it isn’t so easy. This tip provides a macro you can use to get just the style list you need. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing a Style Sheet If you have a number of defined styles in your documents, you may want to print out a list of those styles at some time. Word allows you to create such a style sheet, just by selecting what you want printed in the Print dialog box. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing Style Sheets Styles are used extensively in some documents. This tip explains how you can easily print a list of all the styles used in a document. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Problems with TOC Styles If you generate a table of contents for your document, there may be some unexpected surprises in the way the TOC appears. This could be directly related to how you have the headings in your document formatted. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Protecting Styles If you spend a lot of time getting your document styles set “just right,” you don’t want to take the chance that they will be corrupted through regular editing tasks. As this tip explains, the best way to protect your styles is to make sure you only paste plain text in your document. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Quickly Copying Styles Need to copy a style from one document to another? It’s as quick as copying the paragraph between the documents—with one very important caveat. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Quickly Displaying the Style Dialog Box If you display the style area, you can quickly display the Style dialog box. Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Removing Unused Styles Got an older document that has a bunch of unused styles defined in it? You can get rid of those styles easily by using the short macro in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Renaming a Style Once you’ve added a style to a document or template you can later rename it. Exactly how you rename it depends on the version of Word you are using, as discussed in this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Retaining Explicit Formatting after Applying Styles If you apply paragraph styles to paragraphs, that application may result in the unwanted removal of some explicit formatting, such as italics or bold. This tip presents a technique that allows you to easily retain the explicit formatting you want to keep. Microsoft Word versions: 2002 | 2003

Shortcuts for Basic Style Formatting Want to get your text away from the explicit formatting you applied, back to the underlying formatting? Here’s a couple of handy shortcuts you can use in that regard. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Turning Off a Dictionary for a Style You may have a style that you want the spelling and grammar checker to ignore. Turn them off with this tip. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Turning Off Automatic Hyphenation for Parts of a Document Word can hyphenate documents automatically, if you want it to. But what about those situations where you want most of a document hyphenated and some of it not hyphenated? The answer is to do some formatting changes to your styles. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Turning Off Smart Quotes for Specific Styles Smart quotes can be helpful in making a great-looking document, but at times they can be a real pain. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could control smart quotes based on the style of the paragraph you are creating? Unfortunately, this isn’t currently possible in Word. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Understanding Styles Styles are a powerful feature of Word. They allow you to define how text appears, independent of the actual text itself. This tip explains how styles work and how you can create them in your own documents. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Unwanted Styles Does the Style drop-down list seem overpopulated with styles that you don’t use or want? This tip provides a way, using RTF files, that you can possibly get rid of those unwanted styles. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Using the Style Area Sometimes it is handy to know what style has been applied to paragraphs. This is where the style area comes in really handy. Turning on the style area is easy, provided you are viewing your document in the proper way. This tip explains how to use the style area. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Word Freezes when Updating Styles If you have problems with Word freezing at times, it can be very frustrating. Here’s a couple of things you can check out if Word freezes when you update styles from a template. Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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