Styles

  • Thread starter Thread starter aalaan
  • Start date Start date
A

aalaan

OK. I need some help here. I'm trying to get into styles. Previously I would
look at a raw file, typically single spaces, US English, Times New Roman and
to prepare it I would select all then change the font to Arial, paragraphs
to 1.5 spacing, Select Australian English.

Now I believe I should be able to do that by creating a new style embodying
all the above, and then simply applying the style to each raw document
(going select all and then choosing the style). However,the raw documents I
look at have their styles already attached, and I now cannot find my new
style in the list. What am I doing wrongly?
 
Styles come from the document template, so unless you're pouring the
document text into a new document based on the template in which you created
the style, the style won't be available. Also, if you're using Word 2002 or
2003, the Styles and Formatting task pane (and almost certainly the Styles
list in any version) will be showing "Styles in use" or "Available styles"
rather than "All styles." If the style *is* available, you can force the
Styles list to display it by pressing Shift while you click the down arrow
beside the Style box.

--
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.
 
I don't suppose you are doing anything wrongly, you just don't have an
understanding of how styles work.

A document gets its styles from its template when created. After that
it's on its own. You can sort of do what you want to do, but using
Tools>Templates and Addins to "attach" your template with "your" style
to each raw document. Then check the box "Automatically update
document styles." This will load your template styles into the
document. After you have done this, then go back and uncheck that
options before continuing to work with the document.

Now subject to what Suzanne has told you already, you may see your
style in the dropdown list. See:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/previous/xp/columns/column14.asp
 
And the missing ingredient is which styles? If the original document has
used default style names, then this will work fine, but the creator may have
deliberately used new style names to make automatically changing the styles
difficult. In that instance, you either need to edit these styles or apply
your own template and then go through and replace the original styles with
your styles. This can be done using Find and Replace.

Terry
 
OK Thanks both. Actually I have been experimenting and I think I have
largely succeeded, but now have a small residual problem.

Here's what I did: I've created the style as required and saved it in my
standard normal.dot.

Then within the raw document I go Format | style, then organizer. The RH
pane shows the new style in my normal.dot. I select my required one (which I
happen to call copyedit), and then by clicking on the transfer arrow this
copies the new style to those available to the raw document. Then I select
all and apply the style. This seems to work, but a new problem has arisen.
If I deliberately set the language to a non-required one for *part* of the
document, and then apply my style to the whole document, it does not
overwrite the 'wrong' part. But this is what I wanted to do -- to apply a
global style to a document that overwrites the miscellaneous different ones
I sometimes see in a raw document.

TIA for ideas.
 
Hi Terry

What I find is that often *part* of a document is set to the wrong language,
possibly manually rather than by applying any style.

To test my attempted solution, I deliberately set a paragraph or two to a
'wrong' language (not using styles), and then try to apply my style (and
right language) to the whole document.

I wanted my style to override any such individual language settings and
force the whole document to my chosen language. This is what it doesn't do.
I currently have to go through the whole document (a terrible job of it's a
full-length work of 80,000 words!) and individually reset the spurious
'wrong' languages.

Any way round this apart from 'find'?
 
Hi aalaan,

I sometimes come up against this problem when manual changes have been made
to paragraphs or fonts. Have you tried Ctrl + spacebar? This is the shortcut
to clear formatting (I think it takes it bak to Normal) including all manual
formatting. You could try using this first and then apply your copyedit style.

FWIW Ctrl+q reapplies a style to a paragraph. I have found this a very handy
tool.

HTH

Fiona Nelson
 
And that, Fiona, Did it!

Thank you very much to all who responded.

Like someone else who posed on here, I have been keeping selected solutions
in alphabetical order in a ring binder. This ng is an essential information
source, IMHO.
 
Do both. One resets the paragraph formatting and the other resets the
Character formatting. By doing both, you ensure that direct character and
direct paragraph formatting is removed and only the raw paragraph style
remains.

Terry
 
Glad to be of help. Thanks for posting back that it worked. I agree that this
is the most useful ng I belong to.
 
Back
Top