problem with Word XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Christina
  • Start date Start date
C

Christina

While far from a new user of Word, I am a new user of Word
XP. I have a certain document style that I use on a very
regular basis. This document requires the "title" of each
page to be bold and indexed, but the rest of each each
page is normal. When I try to make that "title" bold, Word
is making the entire document bold. It takes several undos
to get Word to get just the "title" to be bold. I can do
this manually, but these documents usually end up being
about 100-200 pages long (although the one I am working on
right now is new, a baby at only 15 pages). How can I get
the program to only bold what I want to bold? I've never
had this happen in any of the previous versions of Word
I've used over the past 10 years. Any ideas? Thanks in
advance.
 
The general answer to your question is in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm.

But what you need to address is more basic. If bolding your title bolds the
entire document, then I would assume that you are using the same style
(Normal) for the entire document and applying direct formatting. So let's
look at what you need to be doing differently:

You write: "I have a certain document style that I use on a very regular
basis. This document requires the "title" of each page to be bold and
indexed, but the rest of each each page is normal."

1. Whenever you have "a certain document style" that you use regularly, you
should create a template for this document "style." When you create new
documents based on this template, they will have the characteristics you
want. For more on this, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart1.htm

2. Word has a built-in Title style that you can use for titles; see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ApplyAStyle.html. You can modify this
style as needed; see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ModifyAStyle.html.

3. Since you have a "title" on each page, however, I suspect what you need
instead of the Title style is the Heading 1 style. This can also be modified
to suit your needs, and there are significant advantages to using Word's
built-in heading styles; see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/UseBuiltInHeadingStyles.html.

4. I'm not sure what you mean by "indexed," but if by this you mean that you
want each heading included in the table of contents, then this is assured by
using a built-in heading style, as they are included automatically. For more
on TOCs, see http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/toc/CreateATOC.html.

5. If you want every Heading 1 to start a new page, format it as "Page break
before" (Line and Page Breaks tab of Format | Paragraph).

6. You want the rest of the page to be "normal." I would suggest, however,
that you not make it Normal; I recommend Body Text style instead (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NormalVsBodyStyles.htm).

7. You can make it very easy to apply your two styles. Ctrl+Alt+1 will apply
the Heading 1 style. When you are modifying the Heading 1 style, select Body
Text as the "Style for following paragraph," and every time you press Enter
at the end of a heading, you will be in Body Text style.

When you have created and saved your template, you can then create a
document based on that template and enter formatted text very efficiently,
pressing Ctrl+Alt+1 (or any other keyboard shortcut you assign to the
Heading 1 style) every time you want a new page and Heading 1, and then
typing in Body Text till you come to the point where you need a new
page/heading.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
THANK YOU!!! Today is literally the first day using Office
XP, and I was about ready to kick the computer! ;-)
Unchecking the "automatically update" box did the trick.
Again, THANK YOU!!
 
I hope you will also read and take on board the remainder of my post. If you
are just starting to use Word, then this is the best time to start learning
to use templates and styles.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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