Working with Other People's Files

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 30, 2021)

If you work in an office where Word is used, it is likely that you need to work with documents from other people. If you simply load up their document, then you have to put up with their formatting choices. This may be hard to do, especially if you don't like their choices in fonts or spacing. To overcome this, open a new file (based on the template of your choice) and insert their file in this new document. If there are any styles in their document that match names in your document, then your styles will take precedence. Thus, your formatting choices will be used, not theirs.

Note that this tip will not work if styles were not used in the original document. If the other person explicitly formatted text using the menus and toolbars, then the formatting they used will remain. To overcome this, you may want to select the entire document and reset it to the Normal style.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (999) 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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