Style not changing

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ernie
  • Start date Start date
E

Ernie

Hi
I have imported a document into Word 2000 (SP-3) which has
styles applied to certain phrases. I select the phrases
and apply a differnet style (e.g. heading 2) and whilst it
changes the look of that phrase, the style is still shown
as the original. Any ideas anyone?

Thanks
 
There are two types of text styles in Word: paragraph
styles and character styles. Character styles store
character formatting (font name, font size, color,
underline, bold, italic, hidden, etc.) only. Paragraph
styles determine the formatting of an entire paragraph
(line spacing, paragraph spacing, indents, tabs, etc.)
including font formatting, unless it is overridden by
direct formatting or by a character style.

Character styles are the only type of style that can be
applied to a single word or a phrase. If you want to apply
a paragraph style (such as "Heading 2"!), you must either
select the entire paragraph or simply position your cursor
in the paragraph; if a small part, such as a single word
or a phrase, is selected, Word will only apply the font
formatting to the selection.

Stefan Blom
 
Paragraph styles, such as "Heading 2", cannot be applied
to a selection that is less than a paragraph. If you try,
Word will apply only the character formatting (font, font
size, underline, italic, bold, etc.) and leave the rest of
the paragraph unchanged, as you've discovered. The result
is equivalent to choosing Format>Font and selecting
properties from there. What you need to do is to either
select the entire paragraph or position the cursor within
the paragraph before you apply the paragraph style.

On the other hand, if you really want to apply a style to
part of a paragraph, you have to use character styles;
these are designed for this purpose.

Stefan Blom
 
In Word 2002 and above, you can apply paragraph styles to portions of a
paragraph, but they are treated for most purposes like character styles (the
exception being that Word will "see" them in creating a TOC).

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

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Of course -- I completely forgot to mention the "style
separator" feature...

Thank you for pointing this out!

Stefan Blom
 
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