Listing All Styles in the Style Drop-Down List

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 21, 2026)

When you first start to create a document, you often have a need to utilize different styles for your paragraphs. Unfortunately, those styles may not be initially visible on the Style drop-down list on the Formatting toolbar. By default, the Style drop-down list only lists the following styles:

Built-in Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 styles.
Built-in Normal and Default Paragraph Font styles.
Any user-defined (non-built-in) styles.
Any styles in use in the document.

If you want to list all the built-in styles in the list, hold down the Shift key as you click on the down-arrow at the right of the Style drop-down list. Word dutifully lists more styles than you may ever need.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (858) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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