Word Q & A
When it comes to questions about Word, we have an idea that what you really want is someone who comes in the box, maybe with a lab coat and a pocket protector—someone who can provide all the answers you need, whenever you need them. We asked Jonathan to stand in by phone, but he was unwilling to make his cell phone number available.
Without access to Jonathan 24/7/366 (!), we'd like to try a kind of question and answer post. It might not have the answer to your question right now. Then again, it might. Or you might read something that will be of use to you in the future.
I'm starting this effort with the first Q & A blog post. My name is Joannie Stangeland, and I edit help content for Word. I also write some content, and I've been known to pester program managers about various features and how they work.
This time, we're taking a look at styles. We received quite a few questions about Styles in Word 2007. These are not even all of them, and we'll try to take up a few more in the future. We also have some questions about revision marks and page numbering.
Finally, you can find a list of online Help articles that may provide more information or the answers to your questions that we haven't covered here.
Here we go:
Do it with style(s)
How do you update styles? This isn't very intuitive to me.
You can change the way a particular style looks, or you can change all instances of one style to a different style.
Change the look of a style
The short way:
- Select some text that's in the style that you want to update. For example, if you want to change your Heading 1 style, select one of your Heading 1 headings.
- Make the changes that you want.
- On the Home tab, in the Styles group, right-click the style that you want to update, and then click Update [style name] to Match Selection, where [style name] is the style that you just changed.
The dialog box way:
- On the Home tab, in the Styles group, right-click the style that you want to update, and then click Modify.
- Under Formatting, make any changes that you want to the font, the size, the color, the spacing. You get the idea.
- If you want to use your updated style in all your documents, not just the document that you're working on now, click New documents based on this template.
This takes a little more time (one more step), but the Modify Style dialog box provides more information and more options (for example, that New documents based on this template option).
Change all instances of a style to a different style
Let's say that you decide all your Heading 1 headings really need to be at the Heading 2 level. You can make this change with just a couple of clicks—handy when you're reorganizing a document.
- On the Home tab, in the Styles group, right-click the style that you want to change, and then click Select All [number] Instance(s), where [number] is the number of times that style is currently applied in your document.
For example, if you have three Heading 1 headings, the command says Select All 3 Instance(s).
- Click the style that you want. In the example, you would click Heading 2.
I hope that covers it. If not, stay tuned.
Does Word have a way to restrict ANY new styles being created on the fly? If not, it should. It's too annoying and confusing when all these styles start multiplying like rabbits.
By default, Word 2007 doesn't do this. No longer do you see every little formatting change listed in the Styles task pane. However, if the default setting has been changed and Word is listing all of your formatting work, you can change this setting in the options for the Styles task pane.
- On the Home tab, click the Styles dialog box launcher. At the bottom of the task pane that opens, click Options.
- Under Select formatting to show as styles, clear all of three of the check boxes. Now you can apply formatting to text and it will not appear as a separate style in the task pane.
However, styles are still the best way to ensure a consistent look throughout your document. If you're going to reuse that formatting in other places, consider creating a separate style that you can use whenever you need it.
Can I use the keyboard to close the Styles task pane when I'm done applying a style?
Press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S to close the task pane. This key combination acts as a toggle, so you can also use it to open the task pane again.
Bonus styles tip
If you get stuck, and you can't get the style of your selected text to change, click the More arrow in the Styles group, and then click Clear Formatting. It's like starting with a clean canvas.
The More arrow looks like this:
[Edit: Removed an incorrect description of Automatically Update. ]
