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Microsoft Word Formatting & Styles
by Linda Johnson
reprinted with permission from
Neat Net Tricks
Premium
You may have noticed that Microsoft Word changes all the
formatting when you copy/paste from a website or html email into Word. The
reason this happens is Word uses Styles to format paragraphs, fonts, etc., so if
you copy something from a website that also uses Styles, the Style applied to
your document will be YOUR default Style and not that used by the website. For
example, let’s say your default Style for Heading 1 is Times New Roman, 14pt.,
Italic, Centered, but the Heading 1 Style applied to the webpage is Arial,
12pt., Bold, Right Aligned. Because this part of the website includes a heading
1 tag in the html code, this is included when you paste it into a Word document,
and Word assumes you want to use YOUR heading 1 Style, so it changes the text to
Times New Roman, 14pt., Italic, Centered.
Word 2002 now includes a smart tag that gives you the option
to not “use destination styles” after you have pasted into Word, but it’s still
a tad buggy and doesn’t always work. The best way to be sure you can fix these
annoying changes is to understand how to modify Styles.
A Style is simply a set of formatting instructions that you
can apply to text or paragraphs with one click. Styles include fonts, character
spacing, indentation, line spacing, etc. If you click on the dropdown arrow to
the right of your Style box, you will see all the Styles that are available to
you in your global template. Your Style box is located on the left end of your
Formatting toolbar and usually has the word "Normal" in it when you open a new
blank document.
Notice, in Word 2000, Styles (like fonts) are displayed in a
view that actually shows you what the Style will look like.
1. Type this line into a new blank document:
I want to add Style to my documents.
2. Place your insertion point anywhere inside this sentence
and go to the Style box and select "Heading 1" and you will see the formatting
for the entire sentence changes to the Style associated with Heading 1.
Notice: in the list of Styles, there are different symbols to
the right of them and numbers like "13 pt", etc. The pt. size is the size of
the font associated with that Style and the Paragraph marker (looks like a
backward P) indicates that this is a paragraph Style, while the small “a”
indicates that it is a character Style.
Let's take a break here and talk about Word's "global
template". The global template is the template used to apply all the settings
that you want as defaults in all of your documents. It is a file named
normal.dot and it is the file you open when you click on the "New" button on
your Formatting toolbar (the one that looks like a white sheet of paper with the
corner turned down). This is the same file that is opened when you go to the
File menu and select "New" and then select "Blank Document" from the list of
available templates.
You can modify the existing Styles in your global template or
you can add new ones to the list.
To modify an existing Style:
1. First, go to the Format menu and select "Style".
2. And you will be presented with the Style box.
3. Because you just styled your sentence as "Heading 1" and
your insertion point is still inside that sentence, you see that Heading 1 is
the Style that is selected in the list of Styles on the left. Because Heading 1
is selected, any changes you make in here will be applied to the Heading 1
Style. Also, look at the box in the top right corner that says "Paragraph
Preview". This shows an example of how this Style looks. Below this is the
"Character Preview" which shows the way the font associated with this Style
looks. It also tells you the name of the font this Style uses. Underneath this
is a "Description" of all the settings included in this Style. In my case, my
Heading 1 Style is set for 16pt (1pt is equal to 1/72 of an inch, so 72pt font
would be one inch tall), bold, kern at 16pt (this tells Word how to set the font
spacing between proportional fonts), Space before 12pt (this is space before
each word), after 3pt (the space after each word), keep with next (the paragraph
Style that tells Word never to put a page break between this paragraph and the
next one), Level 1 (this means if this Style was used in an outline or to
produce a Table of Contents, this Style would put this data in the Level 1
category). Cancel your way out of this box to close it without making any
changes.
4. Hit Enter at the end of your heading 1 line and type
This is my normal style. You will see that this sentence is showing
as "Normal" in your Style box. Click inside this "normal" sentence and go back
to Format>Style. Be sure "Normal" is what is selected in the list of Styles:
5. In my case, my Normal Style includes Arial font, 14pt
font size, English (the language my spellchecker dictionary will use), Flush
left (the alignment of my paragraphs), spacing single (my line spacing), and
Widow/orphan control (this is a paragraph format that tells Word to adjust
paragraphs so single words at the beginning or end of a paragraph do not end up
on a different page).
6. Click on the "Modify" button and let's modify the Normal
Style in this document.
7. Click on the button at the bottom that says "Format" and
select "Paragraph" from the list.
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CAUTION!! Notice the check box at the bottom that
says "Add to template". DO NOT CHECK THIS unless you want to change the
normal Style in ALL of your documents!!
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8. In the next box you come to, be sure you have the
"Indents and Spacing" tab selected at the top and select "Centered" from the
Alignment dropdown list. Notice the preview at the bottom, then click OK to
return to the Modify Style box and click OK again to return to the Style box.
9. You see your new Centered alignment Style has replaced
the "Flush left" that was previously there. And you see you have two buttons at
the bottom to "Apply" your changes or to "Close" this box. These are very
important and should be understood before you go clicking on anything.
10. Most people think clicking on the "Close" button just
closes this box without applying any changes. This is NOT true.
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Clicking on the Close button will apply your changes to
every paragraph in your document which uses the Normal Style.
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Clicking on the Apply button will apply your changes to
every paragraph in your document PLUS the paragraph that currently contains
the insertion point (even if that paragraph is in a different Style!!)
11. In this case, since we are within a paragraph that is the
Style we want to change, you can click on either Close or Apply.
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NOTE: A "QUIRK" IN WORD!! If you apply formatting (like center alignment)
to one Style in your document, the formatting may be applied to other Styles in
your document that have nothing specified for alignment. So, if your Heading 1
Style does not include a specified alignment type, the Heading 1 line in your
document may have now taken on the center alignment you assigned to the Normal
Style. If this happens, click inside your Heading 1 line and go back to
Format>Style and change the alignment to Left and now your Heading 1 lines will
be left aligned and your normal lines will be center aligned. Notice that your
normal line did not take on the left alignment when you assigned it to Heading 1
because it already had center alignment assigned to it. What can I say? It's a
bug. Some of you may not have this problem and some of you may and I cannot
explain why.
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Now that you have a general understanding of how Styles work,
this can help you with cleaning up the formatting in documents you copy from
websites and/or html mail. All you need to do is change the formatting for
whatever Style is being used in the document and the changes will be applied to
every line in the document that uses this Style. Just DO NOT PUT A CHECK IN THE
BOX THAT SAYS “ADD TO TEMPLATE” or the Style changes you make will take effect
in all of your documents.
Hope this clears this up some for you. If you want to learn
more about how Word works, I invite you to join one of my online classes or buy
one of my Word eBooks. You can get
information on that here. |
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