Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

	Understand the importance of Styles
	Understand the difference between Paragraph and Character Styles
	List all available styles
	Create, Modify and Locate your Own Styles
	Understand Where Styles Live
	Automate Styles
	Copy Styles
	Use Heading Styles to Enable quick and easy navigation of a document.
	Use the Organizer to Copy Styles to/from a different template or document
	Explore Style Gallery
	Copy Text Formatted in a Style
	Other Word Features that Depend on Styles
	Troubleshoot Issues with Styles

Additional Written (and Web) Resources

	Word for Law Firms by Payne Consulting Group: Word 97 for Law Firms (also at Amazon.com UK) Word 2000 for Law Firms (also at Amazon.com UK) Word X (2002) for Law Firms (also at Amazon.com UK)
	Tips for Understanding Styles in Word 2002 by Shauna Kelly, MVP
	How Styles in Microsoft Word Cascade by Shauna Kelly, MVP
	To Style or Not to Style by Microsystems Engineering
	Styles in a Networked Environment - newsgroup discussion
	Create a Template Part 2, John McGhie, MVP.
	What Happens When Styles in a Template and Document Don't Match? (Microsoft)
	Quickly Reorganize Long Documents Using Outline View (Microsoft)
	Template Basics in Microsoft Word
	The Seven Laws of Styles by Bob Blacksberg in his "Word of Law" column in Woody's Office Watch
	Use No Empty Paragraphs by Bob Blacksberg
	Typing: Get Over It! by Bob Blacksberg
	(Keyboard) Shortcuts to Styles by Bob Blacksberg
	What is the difference between the normal style and the Body Text style?
	Letterhead System - styles used to format letters and letterhead
	Letterhead Textboxes and Styles Tutorial - two-page template download that demonstrates use of  Styles that are based on each other and use the style for following paragraph feature Use of the StyleRef field to insert information from the body of a letter into the continuation page headers automatically The AutoText list restricted by styles for the salutation and closing. Textboxes in headers and footers to reserve space for preprinted letterhead Insertion of a date automatically that will not change when you open the document at a later date Insertion of the typist's name as signer automatically by accessing the Author document property.
	Using Styles in Letterhead and in Headers and Footers by Charles Kenyon - cascading styles - style for next paragraph - the StyleRef field
	StyleRef Field Tutorial by Charles Kenyon
	IncludeText Field Tutorial - 2 documents with IncludeText links demonstrating switches, interaction of styles, and use of hidden Page field for continuous page numbering of separate documents.
	AutoText Sampler - styles used to organize AutoText - see also...
	Why does text change format when I copy it into another document? by Shauna Kelly, MVP
	What happens when I send my document to someone else, will the formatting change? by Shauna Kelly, MVP
	How to add pop-up lists to any Word document by Bill Coan, MVP.
	Newsgroup discussion of where styles live and style inheritance - starts with message 8 posted by Howard Kaikow - worth the read
	Getting Started With Styles by Dian Chapman, MVP (another tutorial page but shorter than this one)
	A Global StyleSheet in Microsoft Word? by Charles Kyle Kenyon
	Word is always making changes I don't expect. How can I get more control over my formatting? by Suzanne S. Barnhill, MVP, and Dave Rado, MVP.
	So You Want to Write a Book Using Microsoft Word - extensive tutorial by MVP Daiya Mitchell with overview of Styles, Templates and Sections and the interactions among these tool/features. Excellent! Not just for those who want to write books!
	(Advanced) How to safely update a document's styles from its template without using the Organizer (and how to make the Tools + Templates and Add-ins dialog safe) by Dave Rado, Margaret Aldis, Ian Sharpe and Beth Melton.
	How to Apply a Style in Microsoft Word by Shauna Kelly
	How to Modify a Style in Microsoft Word by Shauna Kelly
	Why Does Text Change Format When I Copy It Into a Different Document? by Shauna Kelly
	How Styles in Word Cascade by Shauna Kelly
	Table Styles Not Useful by Shauna Kelly
	Formatting applied to one paragraph affects entire document by Suzanne S. Barnhill, MVP
	Useful StyleRef Field Tricks by Suzanne S. Barnhill, MVP
	Styles DropDown Keyboard Access Add-In - (For Word 2002+) Simple Add-In to give keyboard (Ctrl-Shift-S) access to the Styles DropDown in the Formatting Toolbar
	Styles Dialog Box Add-In - (For Word 2003+) Simple Add-In to give menu access to the Styles Dialog Box
	How to put Word 2002 (and 2003) back the way they were in Word 97-2000 by Suzanne S. Barnhill, MVP (getting access to the Styles dialog box instead of the Task Pane)
	How to Control Bullets in Microsoft Word by Shauna Kelly, MVP. Bullets and outline numbering are very much related in Word. You use styles to implement either in a reliable way.
	OutlineNumbering by Shauna Kelly, MVP (see note above)
	Changing the formatting rules with compatibility options - these can change how Word treats formatting in styles.
	This chapter in Word format.

 

Tip  Microsoft recommends that you use numbering linked to styles to get the best result. CK Note: See How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in your Microsoft Word document by Shauna Kelly and Word's Numbering Explained by John McGhie.

There are several reasons for using styles in a document:

	Consistency — When you use styles to format your document, each section is formatted the same and therefore, provides a professional, clean-looking document.
	Easier to Modify — If you use styles in your document consistently, you only need to update a given style once if you want to change the characteristics of all text formatted in that style.
	Efficiency — You can create a style once, and then apply it to any section in the document without having to format each section individually.
	Table of Contents — Styles can be used to generate a table of contents quickly.
	Faster Navigation — Using styles lets you quickly move to different sections in a document using the Document Map feature.
	Working in Outline View — Styles allow you to outline and organize your document's main topics with ease.
	Legal Outline Numbering – Numbering, when linked to styles, allows you to generate and update consistent outline numbering in legal documents, even ones with complicated numbering schemes like municipal law, tax law, and mergers and acquisitions documents.
	Efficiency of Word — Files which are predominantly manually formatted are less efficient than those which have formatting that has been imposed by styles: manually formatted files, such a converted documents which have been File, Opened, are bloated in file size (bytes) and do not render to the screen efficiently when you scroll through them. This is because Word is a styles-based application: it first reads the attributes of the underlying style, then has to broadcast anything contrary (e.g. manually formatted on top of that). As such, a lengthy document that has been predominantly manually formatted, will behave sluggishly because Word has to work harder at managing it. Additionally, the print formatting processes are equally labored as opposed to using styles.
	HTML AND XML — What lies ahead? A fully structured, styled document will move into HTML and XML incredibly well.

Styles are an essential part of Microsoft Word. In fact, everything you type into a document has a style attached to it, whether you design the style or not.

When you start Microsoft Word, the new blank document is based on the Normal template, and text that you type uses the Normal style. This means that when you start typing, Word uses the font name, font size, line spacing, indentation, text alignment, and other formats currently defined for the Normal style. The Normal style is the base style for the Normal template, meaning that it's a building block for other styles in the template. Whenever you start typing in a new document, unless you specify otherwise, you are typing in the Normal style.

CK Note: In Word 2002, there is also a hybrid "character and paragraph" style that isn't discussed in this article. Also introduced with Word 2002 are Table Styles. I don't use them and haven't found them helpful. For a discussion of their shortcomings, see Shauna Kelly's article.

Character styles can be applied to individual words — even (you guessed it) single characters. Character formatting is built from the formatting options available from the Format menu, by selecting Font; settings from the Tools menu, by selecting Language, and then selecting Set Language; and in certain cases from the Format menu by selecting Borders and Shading, and looking on the Borders and Shading tabs of the Borders and Shading dialog box. The following table shows the formatting that can be in a style.

A paragraph style contains both font and paragraph formatting which makes it more flexible than a character style. When you apply a paragraph style the formatting affects the entire paragraph. For example, when you center text, you cannot center a single word. Instead, the entire paragraph is centered. Other types of paragraph-level formats that styles control are line spacing (single-space, double-space, etc.), text alignment, bullets, numbers, indents, tabs and borders.

Formatting	Character Style	Paragraph Style
Font	Yes	Yes
Tabs	No	Yes
Border	Yes	Yes
Spacing	No	Yes
Alignment	No	Yes
Indents	No	Yes
Shading	Yes	Yes
Language	Yes	Yes
Numbering	No	Yes

Word 2002 and Word 2003

There are actually four style types in Word. Each has an icon that appears next to it in the Styles and Formatting task pane. When you use the New Style dialog box to create a new style, the types are available on the Style type list. Paragraph . Applies to all the text within the end paragraph mark of where your pointer is positioned. Character . Applies at the character level—to blocks of words and letters. List . Provides a consistent look to lists. Table . Provides a consistent look to tables.

 

 

Tip  Keyboard users can press CTRL+SHIFT+S and then click the up or down arrow keys on the keyboard to move through the list of available styles. Pressing F4 on the keyboard once inside the Style box activates the drop-down list, which you can then traverse with arrow keys.

CK Note  This does not work in Word 2002 or later. A macro is needed, assign it to the key combination. You can download an Add-In that does this from my downloads page.

 

Note  If you're using Word 2000, the default is for the Standard and Formatting toolbars to share one row. For this chapter, you may find it helpful to turn off this feature. From the Tools menu, choose Customize and select the Options tab. Uncheck Standard and Formatting toolbars share one row and click OK.

Practice: View a List of Styles

 

Note  In Word 2000, styles are listed in alphabetical order. In Word 97 styles listed in the drop-down list are not displayed in alphabetical order. Word 97 lists styles in the following order in the Style Box list: Heading styles Normal style User-defined styles in alphabetical order Body Text styles List styles All other styles listed alphabetically.

3. Click the Style box drop-down arrow to the right of the button. A list of styles available in the active document displays.

The same rules that apply to direct formatting of text apply to style formatting of text. If you want to apply a text attribute to a single word, you can click anywhere in the word and select a formatting option such as bold, italics or underline — Word applies the selected format to the entire word. Similarly, if you want to format multiple words you must first select the multiple words. The same is true for applying character styles. To apply a character style, you can click in the middle of any word and select the character style to format the entire word. If you want to change a group of words you must first select the text before applying the character style.

Applying formatting to paragraphs is a little different. Just click anywhere in a paragraph and apply direct formats such as dragging the ruler to change indentation — since paragraph formats affect an entire paragraph, you don't have to select the paragraph. If you want to affect multiple paragraphs, you must first select the multiple paragraphs. And, similar to applying text formatting and character styles, to apply a paragraph style, click within the paragraph and apply the paragraph style. Or, select multiple paragraphs to apply the same style to each of the selected paragraphs.

CK Note: As of Word 2002 (and later) if you attempt to apply a paragraph style to selected text within a paragraph, you get a new character style with the same name. The character formatting from the paragraph style is applied, but not the paragraph formatting. A new hybrid character style with the same name but with "char" appended is created. To apply a paragraph style to a single paragraph, click within the paragraph without selecting text.

 

Tip  The above shortcut keys are standard in Word documents. You can also assign a shortcut key combination to any other styles that you use regularly. This topic is covered in the section Assign a Keyboard Shortcut To a Style.

Display Paragraph Style Names in Normal View

 

Tip  To make the Style area width larger or smaller without redisplaying the Options dialog box, click and drag the line that separates the style name from the text of the document.

6. From the Tools menu, choose Options, and select the View tab and set the Style area width back to 0.
7. Click OK.

CK Note:   This behavior changed in Word 2002. You can modify Word to go back to the previous behavior. Check the box for "Prompt to update style" on the Edit tab of Tools > Options. You can download an Add-In that restores the CTRL+SHIFT+S behavior from my downloads page.

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.

 

Warning  We do not recommend selecting the Automatically update the style box especially in a legal 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.

Where Styles Live

 

Note  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. We recommend not checking this option. It can produce unexpected results, especially in legal documents that must conform to court rules. CK Note: 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.

 

Note  If you want to add a shortcut key to a style that already exists, Word lets you do that, too. From the Format menu, choose Style. Select the style to which you want to add a shortcut key and click Modify. Click Shortcut Key and follow the steps from the above exercise.

Following a Style with Another Style

 

Note  If a style name that you are copying already exists, you are asked if you want to replace it. Charles Kenyon Note  I have found it best when copying styles using the organizer to copy them three times if any of the styles is based on other styles or is followed by other styles. I'm not sure why this makes a difference, but I've found that clicking on that copy button three times means that these relationships continue in the destination template. I know that when I copy them only once, they do not and the styles are then followed by the Normal style. See this Knowledge Base  article Q113106 for possible explanation. You can use a global template as a stylesheet if you include a macro to copy the styles into your document. See A Global StyleSheet in Microsoft Word? for an example of such a macro. Duplicating Style Definitions within a document or template If you have defined one of the built-in styles just the way you want but would prefer to be using a style of your own for this purpose, copying the formatting to your new style without it being based on the existing style. If you are comfortable editing vba macros, you can record a macro that calls up the style modification dialog and goes through each of the various format dialogs and closes them. Then create your new style and edit the macro to refect the name of your new style rather than the one in which it was recorded. Run the macro and the new style should match your original one. Much simpler is using one of the tools that comes in the WOPR Add-In. The Style Duplicator lets you create a new style with the same definition as an existing one. The WOPR Add-In is only available with Que "Special Edition" books about Office and is worth the price of the books by itself.

Copying Text Formatted in a Style Another way to copy styles is to simply copy and paste paragraphs created in another document containing the style you're looking for. All paragraph formatting is contained in the paragraph mark at the end of each paragraph. Make sure when you select and copy the paragraph text that you include the paragraph marker at the end of the selected paragraph. Then, when you paste it into the target document, the selected paragraph formatting and paragraph style are added to your target document.   CK Note:   If you use Autotext entries contained in a global template that are formatted using a style in that global template, those styles will be copied as well. (For this to work with paragraph styles a paragraph marker in the style must be a part of the autotext entry.) This method of copying styles by copying text with a paragraph marker only works if the style being copied in is not already "in use" in the document receiving the copied text. Otherwise the style definition in the target document governs. (CK addition here to Navigating With the Document Map) If you do this and the style already exists in the new receiving document, the existing style in the receiving document is used, not modified. This makes it much easier to maintain consistency within a document but can lead to real headaches if the people who formatted the documents weren't conscious of style use.  In this case if you wanted to copy the style you would want to use the Organizer. Character styles are also copied this way. This gets complex. Sorry about that. Despite this complexity, use of styles for formatting is the key to using Word. If you have text in two different documents that you want to combine, and you want to retain the formatting from each rather than having one style system format the text from both documents, you can. You can use Paste Special ... as Word Document Object. This creates a document within a document, with its own set of styles. Otherwise, if you just want to copy the text, you will need to make some changes to one of the documents before you do the insertion, though. The thing is that if your styles have different names in the two documents, then the formatting will be retained when the text is inserted. So, you'll want to rename the styles in one (or both) of your documents. None of the built-in styles can be renamed, though. If you have the WOPR Add-In, you can copy styles within a document and then use replace to change all instances using one of the built-in styles to the copy (with a different name).  If you have problems with copying formatted text from one document to another, take a look at the troubleshooting section below. If you have other formatting problems such as headers and footers or page numbering to worry about, take a look at Sections, Header and Footers.  Navigating with the Vertical Scroll Bar (CK addition) If you apply heading styles, you can use the Vertical Scroll Bar in Word to move quickly to different parts of your document. To do this, click and drag the box (elevator car) in the vertical scrollbar and move it up or down. You will see tip-text next to it that tells you which section of your document you are in. (end of addition) Navigating with the Document Map If you apply heading styles, you can use the Document Map feature in Word to quickly move to different parts of your document. This is a real time-saver when working with long documents. Practice: Navigate Using Document Map Create or open a long document formatted with heading styles. Click the Document Map button on the Standard toolbar, or from the View menu, choose Document Map. Click on a heading within the document map to move to that section in the document. Click on a different heading in the document map to move to another section within the document. To turn off the document map feature, click the Document Map button on the Standard toolbar. The button works as a toggle. CK Note - Warning: "While it's true that Microsoft put a Document Map feature into Word 97, the whole thing was so badly botched that only a masochist would live with it.  Here's the primary problem: Word 97 takes it upon itself to scan every document as it's opened and assign heading levels to all the paragraphs.  By doing so, any heading levels you've assigned are thrown away--and there's nothing you can do about it. "So here's a word of advice.  If you use DocMap on a particular Word document, don't let anybody with Word 97 (or any earlier version of Word, for that matter) open the document.  As soon as your carefully DocMapped Word 2000 document is opened in Word 97, all the level formatting will be irretrievably lost." Quote from Woody Leonard Teaches Office 2000. FAQs About Word, MicroSystems Some Other Features That Depend on Styles - (CK addition) This section (other features) was added by CK and is not in the original text. Four features that depend on use of styles in a document are: AutoText Lists Tables of Contents The StyleRef field The Vertical Scroll Bar AutoText Lists AutoText lists are an implementation of the AutoTextList field. They are found on the Header and Footer Toolbar and the AutoText toolbar. They are also in a number of the templates supplied with Word. A non-apparent factor with their use is that they are sensitive to styles. AutoText entries are organized by Word according to the style in which they were created. Often only AutoText entries saved in a particular style will show up in an AutoText list field. When such a list is missing entries, the first thing to check is whether the insertion point (cursor) is in the expected style. See the Web Resources page for more on AutoText. See How to add pop-up lists to any Word document for more on the AutoTextList field. See the Letterhead Textboxes and Styles Tutorial for an example using some of Microsoft's default AutoText entries for letters. Tables of Contents Tables of Contents are very easily generated in Word if you use heading styles to mark your headings. See Complex Documents for more on how to do this. Creating a Table of Contents without using styles is a painful experience, although it can be done. The StyleRef field The StyleRef field is used primarily in headers and footers. If you have something like a directory or a phone book document you can have dynamic content in your header/footer like: Allen - Brady With a properly set up letterhead template the styleref field can be used to put information about the addressee and subject into the continuation page header automatically. See the Letterhead Textboxes and Styles Tutorial for a detailed example. See my StyleRef Field Tutorial, Using Fields in Microsoft Word, and Useful StyleRef Field Tricks for more on the StyleRef field. The StyleRef field is especially handy because it updates instantly without any user intervention. The Vertical Scroll bar This was covered earlier. (end of CK Addition)   Troubleshooting Styles — Issues To Watch Out For While styles are an integral part of using Word in a law firm or any environment, there are a few things that cause users difficulty. This doesn't mean that you should not create your own styles; you just need to know how to solve some common problems and understand how you can avoid them in the future. A style has changed unexpectedly Check to see if automatic updating is turned on for the style. With automatic updating, a style is updated automatically when you make additional changes to the style, meaning that every paragraph in your document assigned to that style will change automatically. To turn off this feature, click the Format menu, and choose Style. Select the style in the Styles box, and then click Modify. If the Automatically update check box is selected, clear it. Your style may have been based on another style that has changed. Changes to a base style affect other styles in the document that are based on it. For example, if you change the font in Normal to the Arial font, Word changes the font for the styles used in footnotes, headers, footers, page numbers, and other text. If you don't want a certain style to change when you change the base style, make certain your style is not based on another style. On the Format menu, click Style. In the Styles box, click the style you want to modify, click Modify, and then click (no style) in the Based on box. CK Note: See also Word is always making changes I don't expect. How can I get more control over my formatting? by Suzanne S. Barnhill, MVP, and Dave Rado, MVP. and Formatting applied to one paragraph affects entire document by Suzanne S. Barnhill, MVP

Warning  When you base a style on No Style, you will need to set the Language because the default will be No Proofing. Charles Kenyon note: I recommend that you not base any styles on normal and that you change the built-in styles so that they are not based on normal. This is particularly true for any styles that are involved in paragraph numbering. (But, I have been told by someone whose opinion I respect that my reluctance to use the normal style is based on an urban myth.)

If you change the styles in a template and then reopen a document based on that template, styles in the current document may be updated, based on their new definitions in the template. If you don't want the styles in documents based on a particular template to update when you open the documents, click Templates and Add-Ins on the Tools menu, and then clear the Automatically update document styles check box.

Charles Kenyon note: I recommend that you keep the Automatically update styles check box unchecked. Especially if you will be sharing your documents with others, leaving it checked can result in truly bizarre formatting and make your documents ugly or even unusable. This is true even if you are using a custom template and not normal.dot because...

If the template that contains the style definitions is missing or damaged, styles in the current document use the style definitions from the Normal template.

 

Tip  To make sure that no direct formatting has been applied to the text, first select the text completely and then press CTRL+SPACEBAR. This removes manually applied formatting. Now when a style is applied, there is no reversing situation to occur.

Paragraphs with the same style applied look different.

 

CK Note:   The following is not in the original chapter.

Copying text formatted with a style from one document to another.