Word Q & A

When it comes to questions about Word, we have an idea that what you really want is someone who comes in the box, maybe with a lab coat and a pocket protector—someone who can provide all the answers you need, whenever you need them. We asked Jonathan to stand in by phone, but he was unwilling to make his cell phone number available.

Without access to Jonathan 24/7/366 (!), we'd like to try a kind of question and answer post. It might not have the answer to your question right now. Then again, it might. Or you might read something that will be of use to you in the future.

I'm starting this effort with the first Q & A blog post. My name is Joannie Stangeland, and I edit help content for Word. I also write some content, and I've been known to pester program managers about various features and how they work.

This time, we're taking a look at styles. We received quite a few questions about Styles in Word 2007. These are not even all of them, and we'll try to take up a few more in the future. We also have some questions about revision marks and page numbering.

Finally, you can find a list of online Help articles that may provide more information or the answers to your questions that we haven't covered here.

Here we go:

Do it with style(s)

How do you update styles? This isn't very intuitive to me.

You can change the way a particular style looks, or you can change all instances of one style to a different style.

Change the look of a style

The short way:

  1. Select some text that's in the style that you want to update. For example, if you want to change your Heading 1 style, select one of your Heading 1 headings.
  2. Make the changes that you want.
  3. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, right-click the style that you want to update, and then click Update [style name] to Match Selection, where [style name] is the style that you just changed.

The dialog box way:

  1. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, right-click the style that you want to update, and then click Modify.
  2. Under Formatting, make any changes that you want to the font, the size, the color, the spacing. You get the idea.
  3. If you want to use your updated style in all your documents, not just the document that you're working on now, click New documents based on this template.

This takes a little more time (one more step), but the Modify Style dialog box provides more information and more options (for example, that New documents based on this template option).

Change all instances of a style to a different style

Let's say that you decide all your Heading 1 headings really need to be at the Heading 2 level. You can make this change with just a couple of clicks—handy when you're reorganizing a document.

  1. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, right-click the style that you want to change, and then click Select All [number] Instance(s), where [number] is the number of times that style is currently applied in your document.
    For example, if you have three Heading 1 headings, the command says Select All 3 Instance(s).
  2. Click the style that you want. In the example, you would click Heading 2.

I hope that covers it. If not, stay tuned.

Does Word have a way to restrict ANY new styles being created on the fly? If not, it should. It's too annoying and confusing when all these styles start multiplying like rabbits.

By default, Word 2007 doesn't do this. No longer do you see every little formatting change listed in the Styles task pane. However, if the default setting has been changed and Word is listing all of your formatting work, you can change this setting in the options for the Styles task pane.

  1. On the Home tab, click the Styles dialog box launcher. At the bottom of the task pane that opens, click Options.
  2. Under Select formatting to show as styles, clear all of three of the check boxes. Now you can apply formatting to text and it will not appear as a separate style in the task pane.

However, styles are still the best way to ensure a consistent look throughout your document. If you're going to reuse that formatting in other places, consider creating a separate style that you can use whenever you need it.

Can I use the keyboard to close the Styles task pane when I'm done applying a style?

Press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S to close the task pane. This key combination acts as a toggle, so you can also use it to open the task pane again.

Bonus styles tip

If you get stuck, and you can't get the style of your selected text to change, click the More arrow in the Styles group, and then click Clear Formatting. It's like starting with a clean canvas.

The More arrow looks like this:

[Edit: Removed an incorrect description of Automatically Update. ]

Office Blogs Comments

Comments: (35) Collapse

  • Hi Joannie, Thanks a lot for your elaborate answers.. Regarding the "Automatically update" check box, I thought that the function of this option is to update the style features automatically according to the changes made to the text, and not vice versa. I also thought that the program already updates the text formatted with a style automatically, in case the style was modified. What do you think? Finally, I want to make sure that I can send any questions related to Word 2007 through this blog in the future, regardless of the blog subject. I mean, is that what was intended by the “question and answer post”. Thank you

  • It's Control-Shift-A. No ALT needed.

  • Could you explain how charts work with tables in Word 2007?

    I used to be able to highlight a table==>Insert a chart and viola, a chart of my data appeared. Now Excel opens and I need to either re-enter the data or copy and paste. Is there an easier solution? Is there a reason why the team decided to make another program open and one that does not automatically chart the data in my table I have already made? Thank you,

    Jon

  • Quite often a message appears in an attachment that is .doc. But I don't use Word, I use .rtf or .AWW and I don't know what it means when it tells me to create an association in control panel (or something similar).

    I hear you have a free program that can resolve this issue. Is that so?

    Dr. Dale Beckett

  • Quite often a message appears in an attachment that is .doc. But I don't use Word, I use .rtf or .AWW and I don't know what it means when it tells me to create an association in control panel (or something similar).

    I hear you have a free program that can resolve this issue. Is that so?

    Dr. Dale Beckett

  • Thanks for your questions. We can't promise that we'll get to all of them right away, but we'll note them and keep track. Stay tuned for more soon.

    --Joannie

  • Quick answer: Dr. Dale Beckett, it sounds like you're looking for the Word Viewer (office.microsoft.com/.../HA101869931033.aspx). --Joannie

  • Why doesn't Word 2007 recall my saved default style until I hit the Enter key one time? Why are none of my changes to the Normal style reatined when I close the program?

  • Why doesn't Word 2007 recall my saved default style until I hit the Enter key one time? Why are none of my changes to the Normal style reatined when I close the program?

  • Hi there, I have a question about the new Word 2007 template behaviour.. Here is the simple way of reproducing our problem which will give u a better idea about the actual problem.. Follow the steps below.. 1. Open a blank word 2007 document and SaveAs "xyz.dotm" (macro enabled template) at the following location: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Starup (this template does not need to have any macros in it..) 2. Now open a blank word document and leave it open... (first instance of word 2007 document) 3. And now goto Start -> Run and type the following command "winword /w" (this command will start a second instance of word 2007 document and opens a blank document) PROBLEM -- you will notice a dialog box saying the template (XYZ.DOTM in the startup folder) is locked for editing ...!! 4. My question is this behaviour is abnormal as compared with the previous the versions of word where we have our templates (.dot) files at the same Starup location and no matter how many instances we create of word document there were no such dialog boxes.. -- is this something new from Microsoft with .dotm (or .dotx) templates or is this a bug of Microsoft Word 2007 awaiting for the reply... thx Billy

  • Hi Joannie,

    I am looking for the option in Word for Mac to protect my document, but leave specified areas clients can tab to and leave their information. I know where to find/use it on a PC, but the Mac version doesn't seem to have the same option under "Tools-> Protect document". I know it's gotta' be there somewhere, but can't seem to find it.

    Thank you so much for your help and expertise,

    Kelly

  • We experience similiar problems like Bhavin. Could not find any KB-article on this issue though.

  • Hi, great feature. I would love to see whether floating figures and tables could be addressed. They are very important in scientific writing (I'm writing my thesis), and its impossible to format correctly without them until the very end. Then, if you find a typo you may have to reformat again. I've found a hack that allows them,

    www.ai.uga.edu/.../FloatFigWord.pdf, but nothing else. Please help, I don't want to learn LatEx!

  • I have been working hard on a 125page document. We have changed the styles and added quite a few. After saving and closing the document, I return to my work and for some reason it CHANGES the styles or drops some portion of the updated style - and then I have to start all over again. I have now done this 4 times and I don't know what to do! I even tryied saving as a new file name and it still did it - and even worse than before. Why is Word07 changing the styles or not keeping them with the original document??

    Is there some checkmark box option somewhere to tell it to keep new styles with current document? Need serious help - please!

  • I actually have a Q i would really like an A to. Is there any way of reporting bugs somewhere? I just dealt with an infuriating one that took me a day to figure a way around.

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