Chaos in Styles Formatting

[Fabiola]

I have spent a year and a half trying to update and
simplify MS Word styles. (There seems to be some conflict
within Word that alters styles if copied or moved -
conventionally or through the style toolbar). For
example: a style with a numbering format loses its
numbering.

MS word is NOT style friendly, even when all styles are
discarded and newly created styles are put in their place.

More to the point, I would like to have the styles that I
have spent so much time working on migrate seamlessly into
MS Word 2003. Apparently this is not going to be the case
and I do not know at this time to what extent the old
styles and MS Word 2003 are incompatible. Most of the
time they look fine, but other times they are not the same
as they were in the previous version of Word.
I have not tested every style and every level (numbering)
to determine the exact styles or quantity of styles that
are affected by the new version of Word.

So, once again, if there is an add-in off the
shelf 'style" package that actually works all the time,
Can you please let me know? If Word 2003 still has trouble
handling styles then the official launch of 2003 could
probe chaotic.

On a positive note, Word 2003 does seem to be more stable
and it does have 'corrupt' document recovery (very nice).

I look forward to find an answer.

Thanks,

 

[Richard O. Neville]

Try using File-Organizer. The default opens it with the Normal template on
the right. On the left, close the document that appears and open one that
has all the styles you want. Then copy all of them to the Normal template,
save it, and when you open new documents these styles should be available.
This won't help with existing documents, however.

 

[Fabiola]

Thank you for the information. Do you have any idea of
how to force the existing documents to use the correct
template?

 

[Charles Kenyon]

See reply in formatting.longdocs newsgroup. Please do not multipost.

In the Microsoft Word newsgroups it is considered bad form to post separate
messages to multiple newsgroups. If you need to post in more than one forum
(unusual) please post a single message with both forums in the header of
that single message. That way (1) your question and the various answers stay
together, (2) less space is used on the news servers, (3) less bandwidth is
used on the Internet, (4) you only have to check one forum for answers that
appear in both forums, and (5) you won't unnecessarily annoy the people you
are asking for help. This isn't meant to criticize you. We were all
beginners once and the only way to learn is to try. (BTW, a number of the
Microsoft newsgroups don't want posting in more than one newsgroup, period.
Check the FAQ.)
Take a look on the MVP FAQ website under "getting help" for more reasons ase
well as other suggestions for getting answers more easily and quickly. <URL:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FindHelp/Posting.htm>