Can't Get Rid of Extraneous Styles

[DTM]

I'm new to Word 2007 and am stumped about how to manage styles. We have
numerous documents that were created in Word 2003 and previous versions. I
have a template containing our standard set of about 20 styles, which I have
saved as a 2007 (dotx) template. One of the customizations I use is to add
the styles list tool to the Quick Access toolbar.

I open one of the existing documents and apply the template with
"automatically update styles". The document itself looks OK, but the editing
controls have gone wiggy. The styles list shows dozens and dozens of styles
that are not in the template and were not in the original document either.

If I open the organizer, most of them don't show as being available in the
document. Just to be sure, I used the organizer to delete all of the styles
in the document, except for those few that cannot be deleted, then copied
over the set from the template. No difference--they're still listed. I know
they're not built-in styles, because if I create a new document, they don't
show up.

If I open the Manage Styles window, I cannot delete them there either. For
some, the Delete button is dimmed, for others it is not, but when I click it
and confirm that I want to delete the style, it fails to delete it, and just
dims the button.

Next, I tried to remove them from the Recommended list so at least they
can't be seen. The button for that is dimmed as well, as are the buttons to
move them to the bottom of the list.

The Styles window also shows numerous extraneous styles, but not all of the
ones I see in the styles list. Once again, when I right-click and request a
delete, it asks to confirm, fails to delete and dims the delete selection. I
should mention that in both places, some can be deleted, but not most.

In the end, I'm left with both of those tools forcing me to constantly
scroll through scores of styles that I never use, that shouldn't be there,
but that I can't get rid of or even hide.

In Word 2003, I routinely cleaned up this kind of thing in minutes, but I've
spent days at this with nothing to show but elevated blood pressure. Can
anyone help?

 

[Stefan Blom]

Could you give an example of those styles? What are their names? From your
description, it seems as if they are in fact built-in styles (since your
attempts to delete them fail).

Alternatively, editing restrictions are in effect so that you cannot delete
(or modify) the styles. On the Developer tab, click Protect Document. Click
Stop Protection to turn the protection off. If a password is required, and
you don't know the password, you can do the following: Create a new, blank
document and then insert (via Insert tab | Object | Text from File) the
existing document; this clears the document protection from the inserted
text.

 

[Pamelia Caswell via OfficeKB.com]

Update styles does not delete styles from a document. It pulls in styles from
the template that are not in the document and updates styles that are. The
rest remain. Also, a new W2007 document has 117 paragraph and character
styles (and another bunch of table and list styles). Except for normal,
headings 1-9, and table normal, most can be deleted from a document but not
deleted from Word. That means they will remain in the list of styles
available for use in the document--as you saw. You can delete user-defined
styles from Word, and you can hide styles so they don't appear in the styes
pane.

If you and your users have checks in the "select formatting to show as [if
they were] styles"checkboxes, Word shows you this manual formatting, but they
won't have any style identifiers (¶, a, or ¶a ) after them in the listing.
Clear those checkboxes to only see style names.

Now for what you _can_ do to limit the styles users see in styles list, you
can do make your styles the "recommended" styles (via manager styles >
recommend tab) in your template and for new documents based on your template.
--I suspect that "recommended" means that Word will show other styles in some
situations, but I haven't used this feature enough to figure out when the
happens. -- You can paste or insert older documents into a new document
based on your template.

You can also make use of quick styles and quick style sets. If you remove
all but your styles from the styles gallery and save it as a quick style set
(a mini template that contains only styles & their settings), you can assign
that set to your document template and, so, to documents based on it. Users
can then use the styles gallery to apply styles.


HTH,
Pam

 

[DTM]

A belated "thank-you" for the responses. For some reason, I never received
notification, so until I stumbled across this today, I thought no one had
responded.

As it happened, I eventually worked out the solution by pure trial and
error. There was no protection or restrictions, and the styles involved were
not all built-in. In any case, even with built-in styles, I would have
expected to be able to hide them. But I digress.

The final solution was to open Style Panes Options and select "In Use" for
Styles to Show. This still shows styles that are NOT in use, but does manage
to restrict it to the styles that are actually in the document. That got rid
of most of the junk. The remaining ones that I didn't want to see, I was at
least able to hide. (Now, the hiding is supposed to be "when viewing
recommended styles", which I am not doing--I'm viewing in-use styles--but it
seems to work anyway.)

I don't claim to understand why displaying styles "in-use" actually displays
styles that are not in use, nor why hiding styles in one view actually hides
them in another. But it does what I want. Blood pressure back to normal.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Some additional comments (I couldn't find the original messages in this
thread, so I apologize for any repetition of answers already given):

As you've experienced, notification doesn't always work (this has been
reported several times in the past).

In Word, styles are marked as "In use" if they have once been used; they
don't have to be applied to text right now. This applies to built-in styles
only. In Word 97-2000, you could copy the contents, except for the final
paragraph mark, into a newly created document to get rid of those styles in
use that are no longer applied to text.

In recent versions of Word, you can choose exactly which styles you want to
show. For example, if you are using Word 2007, use the Recommend tab of the
Manage Styles dialog box (click the Manage Styles button in the Styles pane)
for this purpose.

There is yet another possibility: If you have "Keep track of formatting"
selected in the Word Options, you will see not only styles but entries such
as "Normal + Bold" in the Styles pane.