assure that style defs are uniform?

[Barbara White]

I'm using Word 2000 on Windows 2000.

I'm working on a lengthy document (about 300 pages). Since the
document has been evolving over time, it's been touched by multiple
people. What's resulted is that some people made direct formatting
changes to paragraphs. (Instead of editing the Style, they changed
the font or paragraph settings for individual paragraphs.)

There are several categories of Styles that must be uniform--we have
to remove all direct formatting. How can I make certain Styles have
the same font size/definition, for example? Just going back into the
Style doesn't override the direct formatting that's been done to
individual paragraphs that use that Style.

I don't want to eliminate do anything that will risk eliminating the
direct formatting that we're want to remain in the document.

I know how to do this in FrameMaker, but I can't figure out how to
do it in Word...?

 

[Stephanie Krieger]

Hi, Barbara,

You can strip all direct formatting from a paragraph (or
many selected paragraphs at once) by pressing Ctrl+Q to
clear direct paragraph formatting and Ctrl+Spacebar to
clear direct character formatting.

If there is some direct formatting that needs to stay
put, you'll need to do this piecemeal throughout the
document. Or, you can do this for certain styles
throughout the whole document at once, using a simple VBA
macro (code and instructions follow).

To do this for the entire document at once (for just
certain styles), you can run this macro (replacing the
style names in the code below with the ones for which you
want direct formatting stripped, and adding addition
style names to that same line of code, if necessary) to
do it all at once for only specified styles :

For Each apar In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs
If apar.Style = "Heading 1" Or apar.Style = "Heading
2" Or apar.Style = "MyStyle" Then
apar.Range.Select
With Selection
.Font.Reset
.ParagraphFormat.Reset
End With
End If
Next apar



To use this code, go to Tools, Macro, Macros and
type 'ResetStyles' in the Macro Name text box, and then
click Create. Word will open the VB Editor and set up a
macro for you -- by default, that macro is saved in
Normal.dot, so it will be accessible to all of your
documents. Copy the code above and paste it right where
Word has placed your insertion point in the VB Editor.
Then, edit the style names and add others as needed, as
mentioned above.

To run the macro on your document -- just go back to
Tools, Macro, Macros in Word -- select ResetStyles from
the list of macro names that appears and click Run. You
could then add the macro to a shortcut key, toolbar, or a
specific template, etc -- but you don't need to.

Hope these options help.

Stephanie Krieger
author of Microsoft Office Document Designer (from
Microsoft Press)
email: MODD_2003 at msn dot com
blog: arouet.net

 

[Stephanie Krieger]

Hi, Barbara,

If my earlier post doesn't answer all your questions --
feel free to drop me an email. I won't be back on
newsgroups this week.

Stephanie
email: MODD_2003 at msn dot com