Styles

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Styles' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Adding Individual Styles to the Template
One of the things 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.

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.

Applying Styles in Word 2002 and Word 2003
How to apply styles to your document elements.

Applying Styles in Word 6 through Word 2000
How to apply styles to your document elements.

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.

Automatically Updating Styles
When you add formatting to some text in your document, Word may apply your formatting to every other part of your document as well. If you don't want this to happen, here's a way around it.

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.

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.

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.

Changing the Return Address Location
When Word creates envelopes for you, there may be times that you don't like where it places the return address. Repositioning the return address involves modifying the styles used by Word for the envelope. Here's how to make the adjustment.

Cleaning Up a Document that Mixes Styles with Direct Formatting
Need to get rid of direct, explicit formatting applied to a document? Here's an easy way to do it using familiar Word tools.

Creating an Inline Heading
When settling on an overall design for your document, you need to decide how you want your headings to appear. If you want one of your heading levels to actually be "inline" with the paragraph it precedes, applying the styles and not messing up your Table of Contents can be tricky.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Determining a Paragraph's Style in VBA
When processing a document via a macro, it is often helpful to understand what style has been applied to a paragraph. You can figure this out by using the Style property, described in this tip.

Determining How Many Styles are Available
Got a macro that processes or uses styles? You definitely need to know how many styles Word has available in the document. Use the Count property of the Styles collection to determine the figure.

Determining How Many Styles are Available in WordBasic
Quickly figure out how many styles are in your document by using this WordBasic code.

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.

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.

Fast Reformatting of a Style
How to make changes to a style quickly.

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.

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.

Inserting a Cross-Reference to the First Style on a Page
A common way to set up a header is to have it refer to the first occurrence of a heading on the page. (Think how the headers in dictionaries refer to the first word defined on the page.) Word makes this easy to do using the STYLEREF field.

Intelligently Starting a New Paragraph
Using Next Style to help you set up your next paragraph.

Jumping to Styles in the Task Pane
Mouse versus Keyboard selection of Styles in Word.

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.

Losing All Formatting in a Document
Have you ever made a formatting change to a couple of characters or to a paragraph, only to see those changes affect text elsewhere in the document? Here's the reason that is happening and what you can do about it.

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.

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.

Preserving Style Formatting in a Merge
Insert one document into another and you may not get the results you expect. Here's why, along with what you can do about it.

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.

Printing a Full Style Sheet
Word supports the use of styles (they are very powerful), but it doesn't provide a way to get a full-featured style sheet printed. This tip examines ways you can create your own style sheets for printing.

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.

Printing a Style Sheet
Styles are a fantastic way to format your documents easily and consistently. At some point you may want to print out a list of styles available for a particular document. Here's how to do it.

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.

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.

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.

Quickly Copying Styles
You can easily use regular editing techniques to copy styles from one document to another. Here's how to make quick work of the copying.

Quickly Displaying the Style Dialog Box
If you display the style area, you can quickly display the Style dialog box.

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.

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.

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.

Shading Rows in a Table
Need to format the rows of a table so that your data is showcased better? Here are a few ways you can get the shading you need.

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.

Turning Off a Dictionary for a Style
There may be some paragraphs in a document that you don't want Word to spell- or grammar-check. You can "turn off" the checking for those paragraphs by following the steps in this tip.

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.

Turning Off Proofing for Superscripts
When you add superscripts to words in your document, you may not want those superscripts to be spell-checked. Here's how to disable the checking of your superscripts.

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.

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.

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.

Using Alternating Styles
Alternating styles can come in handy when you have to switch between one type of paragraph and another, automatically, as you type your document. Here's a way you can set up this type of formatting, using a Q and A type of approach.

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.

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.

 

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