Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word

Styles Overview

Styles are arguably the most important feature in Microsoft Word. Why? Because everything that you do in Word has a style attached. The definition of a style is two-fold. First, you can think of a style as a set of pre-defined formatting instructions that you can use repeatedly throughout the document. Let's say each heading in a document must be centered, uppercase, bold, and a slightly larger font size. Each time you need to apply formatting to the heading, you have to go through the entire process to get the text the way you want it. If you store the formatting commands in a style, you can apply that style any time you need it without having to do all of the reformatting.

Possibly more important however is that styles are used to "tag" or identify parts of a document. An example of this is whether text is part of a heading, a footnote, a hyperlink, or body text. These are all examples of styles in Word.

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.

Allen Wyatt uses an elegant metaphor about styles:

"Styles are nothing more than a named definition of how text should appear. You can best understand this by comparing your text to water (this is your content). The appearance of the water depends on the attributes of the container in which it is placed. If you place it in a glass it will look one way; if you place it in a pitcher, it looks a different way. The relationship between text and styles is no different; if you change the style that has been applied to text, then the appearance of the text automatically changes." Understanding Styles

Styles allow for quick formatting modifications throughout the document and can be tied into numbering to make working with outline numbered lists easier. See Outline View in Microsoft Word

"While the [quick] styles gallery has been available on the Word home tab since Word 2007, some people just assume styles are meant for people who want big blue text.

"As it turns out, that’s not true. I’m here to tell you that Styles are handy, and if you use them to format your text as you write your document, you’ll be able to take full advantage of the improvements in Word 2013 that we’ve outlined below."

-- Caitlin Ashley-Rollman, Microsoft Program Manager for Word 2013 in blog on using styles

The dialog drop-down arrow on the bottom-right corner of the [Quick] Styles Gallery will launch the legacy Styles Pane. See more on the Styles Task Pane.

*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
Frame	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.

Word 2007 - 2024

Word 2007 introduced linked styles

which can be used for paragraph formatting or character formatting. When used on particular text within a paragraph, linked styles act as character styles, when applied to a paragraph, they act as character styles. When used on text at the beginning of a paragraph, linked heading styles can be a source for a Table of Contents.

The Style Pane has a checkbox to disable these, which I usually keep checked. Here are MVP John McGhie's thoughts on them. I recommend that anyone contemplating use of Linked Styles for important work read those comments.

It is common to have Headings applied to something other than a whole paragraph not show up in the Navigation Pane. This is because they have been applied as "Linked Styles." Here is a link to my article on this: Headings that do not show up in the Navigation Pane or in a Table of Contents. Here is a link to a short demonstration document. Linked Styles Demo

More about Character Styles

I have three character styles in most of my pleading documents. Two replace Bold and Italic formatting. The third is for citations. The first two are built-in character styles of "Strong" and "Emphasis." I started using these before Word had a replace formatting feature. I'm not sure they are needed. They provide a simple way of changing how I emphasize something throughout a document by simply changing the style. It starts out that "Strong" is bold and "Emphasis" is Italicized.

The third, though, has proved its worth through time. It is the Citation character style. I set it to Italic and set the language formatting to "no proofing." This means that case citations with it will not alert the spell checker. (Of course, this also means you better have the correct spelling.) It also disables automatic hyphenation. To set this up, you would create a new character style and use the formatting drop-down to add the Italic and "no-proofing" formatting. The Italic formatting comes through the font formatting dialog, and the "no-proofing" comes through the language dialog. In later versions of Word "no-proofing" is known as "Do not check spelling or grammar."

Character styles can also be used as targets for the StyleRef field. This field gives very quick automatic updating. A character style is much less fragile than is a bookmark when used to mark text that may be edited. I will often use character styles that apply to only one word or phrase in a document that I want to repeat elsewhere, instead of a bookmark. Then a StyleRef Field is used instead of a Ref field to repeat it elsewhere.

A Demonstration of Application of Character Styles to Directly Formatted text with different paragraph styles.

Here is a demonstration of Character Style (like Emphasis) being applied to two paragraphs with different underlying paragraph styles and then having the typeface and font size changed with direct formatting..

There are two custom character styles. The first, Red, has the color added to the underlying paragraph font. The second, Red2, also specifies a font size of 14 pts. These are applied to two paragraphs, both with 10-pt. text. The second paragraph is in my Body Text paragraph style set at Garamond 12-points. The third and fourth paragraphs are in the Heading 1 style (which uses 18 point Cambria font in blue). The font defined in the paragraph style for the first and second paragraphs is Garamond 12 points. In the two last paragraphs, Cambria 18 points. The second and fourth paragraphs were then set to 10 points using the sizing in the ribbon. This is "direct formatting." Then the character styles were applied.

Notice, in the second paragraph, the Red character style, ends up with Garamond 12-pt type and in the fourth, it ends up with Cambria 18-pt type. The Red character style has no typeface or font size defined and takes the size from the size set in the paragraph style. The Red2 style has a font size as well as color defined and it does not care what the font size in the paragraph style is; it keeps the typeface. Neither cares what font size or typeface was set through direct formatting! They both look to the settings in the paragraph style. Those are the settings also known as the "Default Paragraph Font."

The Heading Styles - Special or Magic Styles

The built in heading styles in Word have special properties that make them almost magical. There are keyboard shortcuts for the top three. They can appear without any customization in a Table of Contents generated by Word, you can link and navigate to them with cross-referencing features, and more. See Why use Microsoft Word’s built-in heading styles? by Shauna Kelly, MVP, for sixteen reasons to use these styles. In Word 2007 and later, the Heading Styles are Linked Styles by default.

Use a Style Separator to Put Different Paragraph Styles in the Same Printed Paragraph - (Ctrl+Alt+Enter) - CK Note

The primary reason to do this is when you want a snippet from the beginning of a particular heading to appear in a Table of Contents but don't want the entire heading in the Table of Contents.

The screenshot above, with non-printing formatting marks displayed, shows two different paragraph styles used in one logical printed paragraph. Note the pillcrow (paragraph mark) with the dots around it separating the two. The colors of the styles here are different. The usual use of this, though, would be for the styles to look the same. This was used in automatically generating the Table of Contents. The second part of the paragraph, in the non-heading style did not get picked up in the Table of Contents.

You would not want to base the second style on the heading style though, because then it would also be a heading style. This is, instead, based on the Body Text style and formatted using the same font and size as the Heading 1 Style.

You can add a Style Separator to the end of a paragraph using the Ctrl+Alt+Enter Keyboard Shortcut. Then you add your text for the separate style.

Here is another screenshot:

If you delete a Style Separator, the entire paragraph will take on the formatting of the text preceding the Separator. See this thread on the Microsoft Answers forum for more.

See also: Finding the Style Separator feature for Word TOC's - Office Watch

As of this writing (November, 2024), the Style Separator does not exist on the Macintosh versions of Word. You can create your own by simply pressing Enter at the end of the first part of your text (style 1) and creating your following text in Style 2 in the new paragraph. Then go back and select the paragraph mark at the end of the first paragraph and mark it as Hidden text (Cmd+Shift+H). This method works on Windows versions as well (Ctrl+Shift+H).

Macintosh users can also download the following from my downloads page: Style Separator as AutoText Add-In for the Mac - Macro-free - it holds an AutoText entry with a Style Separator that will work on a Mac. The current keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+Return, which is the same as the Windows version shortcut. I do not know whether the shortcut will work on the Mac but users can assign a different shortcut if they wish, perhaps Cmd+Opt+Return.

See also Creating Run-in Sideheads by Suzanne Barnhill.

Here is a link to a template with two Style Separators.

When you add a style separator, the insertion point and the style separator will both be at the end of the Word paragraph. If you have a paragraph already written and you wish to separate part of it out, place your insertion point where you want the separation to occur. Instead of pressing Ctrl+Alt+Enter, simply press the Enter key. This creates a new Word paragraph.

Format that new paragraph using a style that will not be picked up in the Table of Contents. Then go to the paragraph that you want to show up in the Table of Contents and press Ctrl+Alt+Enter.

This will rejoin the two paragraphs, with a Style Separator between them.

The Style Separator is formatted as "hidden." If you turn on the option to view hidden text, you will see it. If you use the pillcrow on the Home Tab's paragraph group to toggle non-printing formatting marks you will see it with a dotted line square around it. If you only view hidden text it will appear with a dotted line underneath, like other hidden text.

See also the Extended version of this to have a button for the Style Separator on the QAT. Styles QAT Add-In (gives you access to many style features regardless of which ribbon tab is displayed)

Note: Style Separators and Automatically Numbered paragraphs. Only the first should be numbered.

You should not use the Style Separator to try to combine two automatically numbered paragraphs. If you do, the numbering will disappear in the text but may still appear as a separate line in the Table of Contents! The numbering will still count, and the next paragraph will act like it is there but the reader will not see it.

The paragraph with the additional text should not be in a style that is designated to appear in a Table of Contents. For examinations of these problems, look at this Stack Overflow question and my answer here: Delete Blank Space When Using Macro to Insert Style Separator.

If numbering is needed for the joined paragraph, I recommend using SEQ Field numbering insteand of list numbering.
Numbering in Microsoft Word. That way, the numbers will appear in the text. That joined paragraph should not be in a style that appears in the Table of Contents.

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.

Clear All / Clear Formatting is not a Style, it is a Command!

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.

Keyboard Shortcut

Style Name

CTRL+ALT+1

Heading 1

CTRL+ALT+2

Heading 2

CTRL+ALT+3

Heading 3

CTRL+SHIFT+L

List Bullet

CTRL+SHIFT+N

Normal

CTRL+SHIFT+S

Activates the Style Drop-Down List

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 Draft (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.

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.

Using the [Quick] Styles Gallery (Word 2007-2024 (365) - unfinished -

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: Automating Styles: 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.

-----

What it means to have a style (style B) based on another style (style A) is that changes in Style A, the underlying style, will be reflected in styles based on it (style B) unless the new style has deviated from Style A on the feature being changed.

Style A Arial Bold 20 pt Indented .5 inches
Style B Arial Bold 18 pt Indented .5 inches based on Style A

Change Style A to Comic Sans font and Style B will also be Comic Sans
Change Style A to 24 pt - no change to Style B
Change Style A to not Bold - Style B also becomes not bold

See How Styles in Microsoft Word Cascade by Shauna Kelly, MVP

If when you try to create a new style you get an error message that it is based on too many styles, see here.

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.

Since at least Word 2003, the Organizer will not necessarily show all of the styles in the Normal template. See below in troubleshooting.

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.

See also An Alternative to the Styles Organizer by Paul Edstein (macropod), MVP. It lets you copy to multiple documents at once.

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.

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.

Note - styles microsoft word
CK Note:
If you use Autotext or other Building Blocks 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.

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 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 columns, orientation, headers and footers or page numbering to worry about, take a look at Sections, Header and Footers.

Reorganizing a Document Using Heading Styles and the Navigation Pane or Outline View

Moving/Reorganizing Pages in Microsoft Word

Outlining

These pages give directions on how you can use Heading Styles in outlining and in reorganizing your documents. Again, the styles are the key.

Navigating with the Vertical Scroll Bar

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 (heading) of your document you are in.

Navigating with the Navigation Pane (Document Map)

See Using the Navigation Pane in Word 2010 and Later. If you apply heading styles, you can use the Navigation Pane (formerly 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. See warning below!

Practice: Navigate Using Document Map - but SEE WARNING FIRST

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.

The Document Map feature causes problems in all versions of Word up through Word 2007. Do not use it to reorganize your document.

In Word 2010 it was replaced with the Navigation Pane which works nicely.

The Navigation Pane displays three levels by default. This default setting cannot be changed but ou can change it within a particular document for that Word session.

The simplest way to get something to show up in the Navigation Pane is to use Word's built-in Heading Styles. Why use Microsoft Word’s built-in heading styles? by Shauna Kelly

In the screenshot shown above, the paragraph has been assigned the Outline level of one. This screenshot also demonstrates that collapsing outline levels in the document is separate from collapsing them in the Navigation Pane. (Collapsing in the document body applies only in Word 2013 and later.)

Some Special Uses of Built-In Character Styles

This discusses the Emphasis, Strong, Hyperlink and FollowedHyperlink styles. These are set in Style Sets is versions of Word that use them (Word 2007 and later). It also looks at the use of a character style to skip Spelling and Grammar checking on certain words.

I use the Emphasis and Strong styles instead of direct formatting using Italics and Bold. This is so that if I change the document style set, they will follow the set rather than the direct formatting. This is a good reason to use styles, period, but tends to be neglected where these two attributes are involved.

Greg Maxey created a macro that changes the buttons on the home tab to apply these styles. You can find a discussion of that here.

Two others that are a part of [Quick] Style Sets are the Hyperlink and FollowedHyperlink styles. These are hidden until used by default. The Hyperlink style is used by Word whenever a hyperlink is inserted. The FollowedHyperlink style is used whenever a hyperlink within the document is followed. Since these are styles, they can be modified and you can change the visibility of them using the Manage Styles dialog.

You can mark text to be proofed in a particular language or to not check spelling or grammar in specific words using a character style that changes the language attribute. For more on this see Using Styles for Proofing Language Settings, Creating "No proofing" styles in Microsoft Word - No Spell Check character style and Code paragraph style - keep text from being checked for spelling or grammar , and Mastering the Spelling Checker.

Some Other Features That Depend on Styles

Four features that depend on use of styles in a document are:

	AutoText Lists
	Tables of Contents (and Tables of Figures)
	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.

For many purposes, the AutoTextList field has bee supplanted by the Building Blocks Gallery Content Control in Word 2007 and later. That control does not function in the Mac versions, though; the AutoTextList field does.
You can download a document which demonstrates both and compares them from my Downloads page.

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. Likewise, Tables of Figures or Illustrations build on particular styles being used in captions.

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.

Note there are potential problems if the document will be opened on systems with different Language settings. Built-in Style names change with the language version of Word.

The Vertical Scroll bar

This was covered earlier.

Word 2007-2019 (365) Styles terminology (jargon)

A style is a collection of formatting characteristics, such as font name, size and color; and paragraph alignment and spacing. As before, you can have paragraph, character, and linked styles.

A [Quick] Style Set is a collection of styles that are designed to work well together. The built-in [Quick] Style Sets in Word 2007-2019 are called Distinctive, Elegant, Fancy, etc. You can also create your own style sets. If you read something about Word style sets, it is talking about [Quick] style sets. Here I use the full name of [Quick] Style Sets to emphasize the linkage between the [Quick] Styles Gallery and the [Quick] Style Sets. (Stylistic Sets are something completely different from [Quick] Style Sets.)

Here are two screenshots of the same [Quick] Styles with different [Quick] Style Sets applied:

The [Quick] Style Sets distributed with Word have the following twenty-five styles in them:

Normal

Headings 1-9 (Only 1 & 2 shown in gallery until one above is used)

TOC Heading (but not TOC 1-9) (not shown until used)

Title and Subtitle

Quote and Intense Quote

List Paragraph

Strong (character)

Emphasis, Intense Emphasis and Subtle Emphasis (character)

Intense Reference and Subtle Reference (character)

Book Title (character)

Caption (paragraph)

No Spacing (paragraph)

Each style in a [Quick] Style Set is called a [Quick] Style. Most styles are not part of a [Quick] style set and are not in the [Quick] Styles Gallery.

The Home tab of the ribbon includes the Styles group. The Styles group includes the [Quick] Styles Gallery and the Change Styles button (Word 2007-2010) which gives access to the [Quick] style sets. When you choose a [Quick] style set for your document, the individual styles in the [Quick] Style Set appear in the [Quick] Style Gallery. The styles in the document that are part of a [Quick] Style Set will change when you change sets to the definitions in the new set. In Word 2013 and later the [Quick] Styles are found on the Design tab in their own gallery.

To see another representation of the [Quick] styles shown in the [Quick] Style Gallery - one that will be familiar to someone who has worked with Word 2003 and earlier - click on the sloping arrow in the lower right corner of the Styles group (or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S (Mac Cmd+Opt+Shift+S)) to open the Styles Task Pane. This also shows styles that are not [Quick] Styles, though. That is, you get access to all styles (or can if your options are set to display not only recommended styles or styles in use, but all styles).

[Quick] Style Sets can only be used in Word 2007 and later. If you are trying to save your own [Quick] Style Set, make sure that the styles you want to include are set to display in the [Quick] Style Gallery. [Quick] Style Sets are .dotx files and can be directly edited. When creating/editing them, you want to have only the styles you want to import as part of that style set set to display in the [Quick] Styles Gallery.

Location: The English-language built-in [Quick] style sets for Word 2007 should be in the folder:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\QuickStyles ("1033" refers to US English). Word 2010: Office14 instead of Office12. Word 2013: Office15 instead of Office12. Office 16+:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\1033\QuickStyles

If you are running 64 bit Office on 64 bit Windows (or 32 bit Office on 32 bit Windows), the program files folder will be called Program Files (without "(x86)").
Your custom [Quick] style sets (those you create) are located in a completely different location. That folder will depend on your operating system.

These custom files are in the following folders:

Windows XP Location:
c:\Documents and Settings\{your username}\Application Data\Microsoft\QuickStyles\

Windows Vista & 7-11 Location:
c:\Users\{your username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\QuickStyles\

These are hidden system folders. If your Start menu has a search function searching for %APPDATA% will lead you toward the correct folder.

In all versions of Word, cascading styles are available, though, where various styles are based upon one another and a change to one style can ripple through others. See How styles in Microsoft Word cascade. This can give you some of the advantages of Style Sets in any version, but are a bit more work.

Quick Style Sets only include Styles in the [Quick] Styles Gallery

That means they do not include List styles nor Table Styles. See What are the limitations on [Quick] Style Sets?

You can look at what the styles in a [Quick] Style Set look like in a document by holding your mouse pointer over that style set in the gallery.
I have prepared a macro-free document that shows the twenty-five styles that come in distributed [Quick] Style Sets that you can download from my downloads page.
This is a companion to the Themes Sampler document mentioned below.

See A Global Stylesheet in Microsoft Word? for another way to import groups of styles. A [Quick] Style Set with nine levels of outline numbering is distributed as a part of the Outline Heading Styles Global Stylesheet package on my downloads page. The "Black & White (Numbered)" set that comes with recent versions of Word does bring in numbering.

This was prepared using the following procedures:

Creating a [Quick] Style Set

You can have any styles you want in a custom [Quick] Style Set.

I recommend including all twenty-five of the ones that come with the distributed [Quick] Style Sets. If you do not want any of these in your custom [Quick] Styles set, remove them from the [Quick] Styles Gallery.

The distributed [Quick] Style Sets use Theme Fonts and Colors. Unless you have a reason to not use these, I recommend using them.

You can modify the built-in styles to be in your custom [Quick] Style Set. You can add additional styles to your custom set by including them in the [Quick] Styles Gallery. (How to control the [Quick] Styles gallery on the Home tab in Word by Shauna Kelly)

See also [Quick] Style Sets and Themes in Microsoft Word - my shorter article on the Microsoft website

Macro to show styles that are in the [Quick] Style Set for the current document.

Here is a short macro that will create a new document that shows all of the [Quick] Styles in the current document.

Sub describeAllQuickStyles()
' by Jessica Weissman 2012-12-05
' https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13706753/how-can-i-export-style-names-and-definitions-from-ms-word-2010-quickstyle-set-or
' modified for [Quick] Styles by Charles Kenyon 2023-02-07
' https://www.msofficeforums.com/word/50385-how-create-multiple-word-style-galleries.html#post173323
'
Dim docActive As Document
Dim docNew As Document
Dim styleLoop As Style
'
Set docActive = ActiveDocument
Set docNew = Documents.Add
For Each styleLoop In docActive.Styles
    If styleLoop.Type < 3 Then
      If styleLoop.QuickStyle = True Then 'ckk
        ' show only character and paragraph styles, not list or table styles
        With docNew.range
          .InsertAfter Text:=styleLoop.NameLocal & Chr(9) _
          & styleLoop.Description
          .InsertParagraphAfter
          .InsertParagraphAfter
        End With
      End If 'ckk
    End If
Next styleLoop
Set docNew = Nothing 'ckk
Set docActive = Nothing 'ckk
Set styleLoop = Nothing 'ckk
End Sub

Stylistic Sets

Stylistic Sets are OpenType font characteristics or features. These have nothing to do with [Quick] Style Sets but rather have to do with font charcacteristics.
Their only relationship to Styles is that they can be part of styles, like other font characteristics.
As far as I know, they can only be used with OpenType fonts. They are accessed in Word in the Font dialog on the Advanced tab or through the Text Effects drop down..

How to access advanced OpenType features in Word

Using OpenType Fonts in Microsoft Word

Spiffy ligatures and stylistic sets in Microsoft Word

OpenType Ligatures

Think You Know What Open Type Is? Part I, Part II

Selecting All Text Formatted in a Particular Style (and only that text)

The [Quick] Styles Gallery and Styles Pane also allows the user to select the text formatted with a particular style, and only text formatted with that style. You do this by right-clicking on the Style name in the [Quick] Style Gallery or the Styles Pane as shown below.

Once you have done this all instances of text in that style (and not instances of text in a style based on that style or other styles) will be selected in your document. A word count of the selection will appear in the status bar.

The screenshot shows the result for a linked style which has been used as both a paragraph and a character style.

I generally keep linked styles disabled.

Using Office Themes in Microsoft Word

Office Themes were introduced in Word 2007 to allow dramatic changes in the appearance of documents that work together. "One way to think about themes is as design elements that affect the aesthetic appearance of a document. Styles, on the other hand, are geared more to the formatting of text and paragraphs." Herb Tyson, MVP, Microsoft Word 2010 Bible p. 157

Recent versions of Office also have Display Themes like Colorful and Dark; that is a different feature. Here we are discussing themes that make changes in your document, itself. The Office Themes being described here change the printed document, not just the way it looks on the screen.

Word Online does not seem to use Office Themes, exactly, but does seem to use something close to [Quick] Style Sets without Theme connections. See [Quick] Style Sets and Themes in Microsoft Word - my shorter article on the Microsoft website that deals with the Designer menu in Word Online.

Themes are in a Gallery that lets you preview the effect of a Theme change on text.

I believe the themes offered with Office 2016-2019 are identical to those from Office 2013. MVP Doug Robbins has posted the theme sets shown above on his OneDrive. Word Themes - OneDrive . (That appears to be inactive, here is my mirror)

I am unsure when Microsoft added some more, but here are the Themes found in Office 2021.

Every Office Theme defines two fonts — one for headings and one for body text. They can be the same font (used everywhere) or two different fonts. . . In addition, [Quick] Style Galleries for text and WordArt use these same Theme fonts.

All of the styles in the [Quick] Style Sets distributed with Word use the Theme fonts and often the Theme colors and effects.

Themes also incorporate Theme Effects. As far as I can tell, these are primarily about Shapes. Unlike Theme Fonts, and Theme Colors, you cannot create your own.
You can use the Themes Sampler document to explore them, though.

By default, custom Themes are stored in:

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\Managed\Document Themes (old location)

If your user Templates are stored elsewhere, the Custom Themes will be in a Document Themes folder in the User Templates Folder.

Suzanne Barnhill shed light on the subject in a post in a forum:

"The font for many styles in Word (unless you change it to a specific font) is defined as being either the Body font or the Heading font. This is determined by the theme. If, instead of assigning a specific font to a style, you choose Body or Heading, then if you apply a different theme that uses different Body and Heading fonts, your styles will change automatically. You still define the font size and other properties (Bold, Italic) in the paragraph style, but the font itself can be variable. If you want only specific fonts for the styles (and this would especially be true in a template that used more than two fonts), then you can define them in the template styles; they would then not change if you applied a different theme (though some other elements, such as colors, might).

"You can see how this works (with Live Preview) by selecting a document that has both headings and body text in it and then hovering over the various theme font sets" ...

In Word, the main component of Themes other than the two Theme fonts is Theme colors.

Here are the Word 2013 [Quick] Style Sets with three different Themes applied:

You can set your own Theme Colors. On the Design Tab, under Colors, choose Customize Colors to get the following dialog:

That dialog changes the color palette you see when trying to change any color in the document.

	Apply, Customize and Save Document Themes in Word and Excel
	Change a theme and make it the default in Word or Excel
	Exactly what settings are changed when the Word 2003 theme is applied?
	Changing your style in the new Word (2013) Microsoft Blog
	Themes and Style Sets - What's the Difference? Veriti Labs (This is an archive page. Pick a date before 2018.)
	Understanding Themes (and Style Sets) in Microsoft Word by Faithe Wempen (12 short pages, very good stuff)
	See also [Quick] Style Sets and Themes in Microsoft Word - my shorter article on the Microsoft website

I have created a document that uses all of the theme colors, has a shape to demonstrate any theme effects, and shows the Heading+ and Body+ fonts applied. You can download it here.

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. See How styles in Microsoft Word cascade by Shauna Kelly.

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

In Ribbon versions of Word the XML for Automatically Update Styles is found in word\settings.xml file of

<w:linkStyles/>

(Thank you Doug Robbins, MVP, for the XML information.)

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.)

Tip To make sure that no direct formatting has been applied to the text, first select the text completely and then press Ctrl+Q followed by Ctrl+Spacebar. This removes manually applied formatting (including, unfortunately, character styles). Now when a style is applied, there is no reversing situation to occur.