Styles in Microsoft Word (Part III)

For a while this column will shift its emphasis to Word fundamentals. Those who want to read ahead are welcome to look at the Intermediate Users Guide to Microsoft Word on Chas's site. If you do read ahead, and you have questions, please send them to Chas so that he might be able to answer your questions in this column.

This follows up on the article Styles in Microsoft Word (Part I), and Styles in Microsoft Word (Part II). If you haven't read these, it is suggested that you do so before tackling this material.

As usual, you can skip to Chas' keyboard shortcuts of the month by clicking here.

Styles Overview

If you're concerned about whether or not you need to learn styles, we can put it rather simply: you do. Styles are the architecture upon which Word is based. Just about everything in Word is style-driven. In fact, many people in the industry refer to Word as a "style-driven" program.

What we'll cover here:

• Creating, Modifying and Locating Your Own Styles
• Where styles live - documents & templates

Create, Modify and Locate Your Own Styles

Now that you understand what a style is and what it can do, it's time to create some styles of your own. Not only can you create your own styles, you can modify existing styles to achieve the result you need.

Create a New Style

The easiest way to create a new style is to format text with the attributes that you want to apply to the style. It doesn't matter what you type, only what type of paragraph and character formatting that you have applied to the text. Formatting is the only thing that is applied when you apply a style. Although you can create styles that have more advanced attributes such as being followed by an entirely different style, the following exercise shows you just how easy the process can be.

Practice: Create a Style

1. Type your first name on a separate line in a document.
2. Select your name and make the font Blue.
3. Change the font size to 24-points.
4. Apply Bold and Underline formatting to the text.
5. Center the paragraph.
6. From the Formatting toolbar, click in the Styles box (where the style name Normal is usually displayed).
7. Type your first name.
8. Press ENTER. This step is important. If you do not press ENTER your style is not created.
9. Click the Style drop-down list. You should see your newly created style.
10. Test this by typing "This is a test" and applying the new style.

You can use the Style dialog box to create or modify a style. Another option for creating and modifying styles is shown in the following exercise. You create a new style by typing text and formatting it, and then from the Format menu, choose Style.

Practice: Create a Style Using The Style Dialog Box

1. Type the following text:

Styles help users master Microsoft Word. (press ENTER)

Everything in Word is based on a style.

2. Select the text "Styles help users master Microsoft Word." and the paragraph mark () that follows.
3. Center the paragraph and apply a 14-point font.
4. From the Format menu, choose Style.
5. Click New.
6. Type My Style as the Name.
7. Click OK, and then click Apply.

Modifying Existing Styles

There are two ways to modify an existing style. One of these methods is through the Style dialog box. However, an easier method is by changing the style by example using the Style drop-down toolbar button. The Style drop-down is useful if changes have already been manually made to a paragraph formatted in the style to be changed. If this is not the case, styles can be changed using the Style dialog box.

Practice: Two Methods to Modifying a Style

1. Add several paragraphs to the document from the previous exercise.
2. Apply the style that you created to the new text.
3. Select the text Styles help users in law firms master Microsoft Word.
4. From the Format menu, choose Style.
5. Click Modify.
6. Click Format, and then select Font.
7. Change the font color to Blue and the font size to 20-points.
8. Close the dialog box and apply the changes that you've made by clicking Apply. Notice that all text formatted with My Style updates to show the recent change.
9. Select the text Microsoft Word.
10. Change the font size to 36.
11. Click on the style name in the white part of the Style toolbar button (not the drop-down arrow) and press ENTER. It's important to press ENTER and not move the mouse up or down the list of style names. This tells Word that you are working with the current style where the mouse is active. If this step was done correctly, the following Modify Style dialog box should display.

12. You can either choose to Update the style to reflect recent changes, or Reapply the formatting of the style to the selection (go back to the original style format). Choose Update the style to reflect recent changes? And click OK.
     

Tip  A keyboard shortcut is to press CTRL+SHIFT+S (to put you in the style drop down box), and then press ENTER, which will bring up the above dialog.

The style is changed to reflect the formatting of the selected text and this method is referred to as modifying by example. Notice how all paragraphs with the style are updated automatically.

Warning  I do not recommend selecting the Automatically update the style box especially in any environment where multiple users work on the same document. This feature will update the style each time you make a formatting change in a paragraph that has a style attached. If your styles are acting weird, this is the first place to check!

Method 2 - abbreviation addition

1. Use Format => Styles... to call up the Styles Dialog Box.

2. Select "Heading 1" and click on the Modify button.
3. In the name for the style, after "Heading 1" add ",h1" - that is, a comma and h1. This adds a shortcut or abbreviation for the style name which you can type into the style box on the formatting menu instead of the the full name.
4. If you want to save this change to the Style in your normal.dot template, you can check the box for Add to Template.
5. Click OK.
6. You can do the same thing for all of the heading styles, giving each of them an abbreviation, if you want.
7. Finish by clicking on the "Close" button rather than the "Apply" button.
8. If asked when you close Word whether you want to save the changes you made to the global template "normal.dot" answer yes. (You should be asked this question. If you are not, pay attention to future columns or skip ahead and take a look at Template Basics.)

You can see why many people prefer the point-and-shoot method described earlier. When the modify style dialog box is up, you can click on the Format drop-down button to modify style settings for paragraph, font, language, borders & shading, and other settings.

Where Styles Live

A lot of confusion can come from not knowing where styles are stored and when they are available in documents. When new documents are created, the new documents are based on templates. The styles contained within these templates are copied to the new document. Changes made to styles in the document as well as new styles that you create only affect that one new document by default. If you want the change or addition to be added to the template, you have to tell Word to do so.

Practice: Add it to the Template

1. From the Format menu, choose Style.
2. Click Modify.
3. Check the option to Add to template. This makes the style available for any new documents that are based on that template.

The style is added to the currently attached template.

Note  So, any specialized or modified styles in a template will go into a new document. Any of Word's built-in styles that weren't modified in a new document's template will come into the document from the user's normal.dot template.  Documents that have previously been created based on this template are not affected when you add a style to the template. To automatically update style changes in templates and files previously created based on the same template, from the Tools menu, choose Templates and Add-Ins. Select the option to Automatically update document styles and click OK. I recommend not checking this option, at least not without a backup copy of your document. It can produce unexpected results, especially in documents that must conform to style rules.  If you do check this box, click on Attach and then on OK to close the dialog box. Then reopen the Templates and Add-Ins dialog box and uncheck the Update box and click on OK again, so that the document is not saved with this box checked.

For an excellent tutorial on styles and a methodical look at basing styles on one another and reasons not to base styles on normal, see John McGhie's Create a Template Part 2. For a sample demonstrating styles based on one another, use of the style for following paragraph feature, and the AutoTextList field restricted by styles download the Letterhead Textboxes and Styles Tutorial by Charles Kenyon.

* This article is based largely on the tutorial "Understanding Styles" which, itself is based on the Legal Users Guide to Microsoft Word. The original Legal Users Guide was not written by Charles Kenyon but rather by a team of experts gathered by Microsoft. This article uses screen shots from Word 2000 but the methods and distinctions discussed hold true for versions of Word from Word 95 through Word 2002.

Keyboard Shortcuts of the Month for Word

Formatting and Styles

Headings

Headings are a special kind of style and are built into Word at the foundation level. Here are some of the shortcut keys for them:

Note the above was changed for Alt-Ctrl-#. This only works with heading styles 1-3, not 1-9 as earlier indicated.

Chas Kenyon is a trial lawyer concentrating in criminal defense with a long interest (obsession?) with making word processing work well in the law office.  Visit his home page