Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Losing All Formatting in a Document.
Emily has a concern about how she keeps losing document formatting. Every time she highlights a section of text and then changes the font or margin alignment, Word changes the whole document into that new font or margin.
Before explaining how to fix this, it is necessary to do a bit of a review about how formatting is handled in Word. In general, there are two types of formatting in Word: implicit and explicit. Implicit formatting, which is formatting done by "default," is implemented through the use of styles. Explicit formatting is done through the use of formatting commands, such as those found on the toolbars, in the menus, and in various dialog boxes.
All default formatting in Word begins with styles. You can't get away from them; they are always there, even if you try to ignore them. If you change what is within the definition of a style, then you've changed the formatting applied across all paragraphs or characters that use that style. If you create new styles, you are creating new "default" formatting that can be applied to various elements of your document. If you try to ignore styles, then most, if not all, of your paragraphs use the Normal style.
Any explicit formatting you do is always done as an overlay to the underlying style-based formatting. For instance, if you select a few words in a paragraph and then click the Bold tool, the selected text is formatted as bold, but you haven't removed the style that controlled how the text was originally formatted. You can't remove it; you can only override it.
Word also makes it possible for explicit formatting to not just override the implicit formatting, but to become the implicit format. This happens because Word can "absorb" explicit formatting changes into the underlying style. When this occurs, any other document elements that used that style automatically change to reflect the newly applied format.
This behavior (of absorbing explicit formatting into the underlying style) really muddies the water for people just learning how Word handles formatting. All of a sudden, local formats can be propagated globally, and that results in what appears to be strange behavior on the part of Word.
How to solve the problem? Turn off the setting in Word that causes explicit formatting to be absorbed into the underlying styles. You do that by following these steps if you are using Word 2002 or Word 2003:
Figure 1. The Modify Style dialog box.
Finally, follow these steps if you are using Word 97 or Word 2000:
That's it; that's how you stop Word from applying the explicit changes to the underlying style. Of course, if you've inadvertently changed styles earlier (because the Automatically Update check box was selected), then you'll need to go back and change the style definition so that text appears as you want it to. You'll also need to go through and perform these same steps on any other styles in the template or document.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (93) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Losing All Formatting in a Document.
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If you display the style area, you can quickly display the Style dialog box.
Discover MoreEver want to enable spell checking in all of the styles within a document, but don't want to check each and every one ...
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2021-09-01 20:25:34
Leslie
I am using Windows 10, Office 365. When converting text to a table, I lose the formatting. This is frustrating as I convert huge amounts of text to data on a regular basis with the resulting document sometimes hundreds of pages long, and manually reformatting is time consuming and open to errors. Is there a way to keep the original formatting? See (see Figure 1 below)
Figure 1. Example
2021-07-26 19:51:10
Cat
This was very helpful. Do you provide help for Windows 10? There's no point in my subscribing if you don't.
2020-11-24 21:33:33
Louis
Thanks a million for this tip on how to turn off explicit formatting so it won't interfere with implicit styles. Keep up the good work
2020-03-19 04:38:35
ANDREJ
Thanks Allen - youve made my day.
2018-07-23 12:11:26
Lisa
I have suddenly lost numbering format for my list along with some, not all, formatting related to indentation. How do I get it back? On major deadline!
Thank you all.
2017-11-07 10:04:16
Diane Diggles
Hello, My daughter has been using Word 2008 for Mac version 12.0.0 to write her poetry book. She has almost 150 pages. The problem she is having is that every time she reopens the document after saving it ,the formatting has changed. The placements of pictures and words keep shifting. Sometimes it resets after a while on its own. It is really slowing down the process. Thank you for your help.
2017-09-15 21:06:19
James McKinnell
AN UPDATE BY WORD ON SEPTEMBER 15 RADICALLY CHANGED THE FORMATTING ON MY ENGLISH-GREEK EXEGESIS DOCUMENT THAT WAS SAVED BUT OPEN AND RUNNING IT CHANGED THE FONT, CHANGING ALL THE GREEK WORD IN THE TEXT TO THE SAME FONT AS THE REST OF THE DOCUMENT. IT CHANGED THE SPACING, AND REMOVED THE COLUMN ARRANGEMENT, VIRTUALLY DESTROYING TWO WEEKS AND 20 PAGES OF WORK.
. (I DIDN’T KNOW I HAD TO CLOSE ALL WORD DOCS THAT WERE OPEN BEFORE CLICKING ON THE UPDATE. I JUST GOT THIS NEW COMPUTER AND THE LATEST VERSION OF OFFICE, AND I AM SO SICK AND TIRED OF NOT BEING IN CONTROL OF MY WORK, BEING “LOCKED OUT”, REQUIRED TO ALLOW UPDATES, A STUPID “START” SYSTEM, TRYING TO PUSH ME INTO THE RIDICULOUS “BING” SEARCH SYSTEM, ETC. ETC.). i SUSPECT THAT THIS NEW SOFTWARE WAS EITHER DESIGNED TO REDUCE ME TO THE MENTALITY OF A CHIMPANZEE, OR WAS CREATED BY A TRIBE OF CHIMPANZEES.
2016-07-14 15:55:46
jim
I am using Word to write "procedures" with numbered steps.
When I close word and reopen my document, all numbering is gone.
I hit ctrl A and F9 (update all fields), no problem.
Close Word, wait a bit, reopen and nothing, gone. Cannot get numbering back,
or can I?
2016-04-22 05:39:33
Jaap Verbeek
Last night, I got an Office update, resulting in a lot of formatting issues in all document, especially symbols have been changed. My Word version is Microsoft Word 2010-2011. Thank you very much.
2015-06-23 19:54:16
mike
when i convert doc file to html it shows miss alignment in the boxes text in file
pl provide me a solution for this
2015-06-12 16:23:47
ALI
Dear Sir
I had saved one word document a few days ago. Today when I am trying to open
it but I am getting a 'File Conversion' dialog box. It is asking me to select
text encoding = 'Windows Default or MS-Dos or Other Encoding (with list of
items in drop down). And when I clicked cancel, it showed tons of box where I can't read. I did not do any conversion or anything on this file. Please help. Thanks in advance!
when I clicked on window default, it still showed tons of boxes that are not words, which is unreadable.
Please send your response to my email:ashiry@yahoo.com
BR
ALI
2015-06-11 08:38:41
yogita jadhav
when i convert doc file to html it shows miss alignment in the boxes text in file
pl provide me a solution for this
2014-12-28 12:47:52
Don Sylvester
I have the exact opposite problem. After four hundred pages of double-spacing, I saved the document only to have it revert to single spacing and I cannot change it back without rewriting the entire thing. WHY?!!!!!!!!!!
This is six months work down the damn drain!!!!!!
2013-10-23 16:30:27
Alice
Help! I'm busy proofreading a novel. The editing has been extensive. The novel has been split into four different Word documents, separating the chapters (i.e. 1-5, 6-8, etc.). I was in the middle of document four - haven't had an issue with the previous docs - now when I try to open it, most of my changes have totally disappeared. There is no double spacing, no strike-throughs (found under Format:Font), no red lettering for suggested changes, and no comments (entered from Insert).
I do have a file from two days ago that is missing two days work because I renamed this file.
Is there a way I can retrieve it without having to redo my work in the old file?
I appreciate any help you can give.
Alice
2013-06-22 07:35:56
Mickey Mouse
When I copy and paste, I want to keep destination formatting, and every time I paste, I have to click and choose. I want to set keep destination formatting as my default(MSOffice 2003)Thank you, you are an awesome teacher.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: 
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