'Char' in Styles and Formatting - please help!

[Fiona]

Hi, I have the dreaded 'char' problem. I'm checking for posts about
it now, but if anyone's got an answer to my problem, please let me
know!

I am working with a large document that is spread across several
files. Each of these files uses the same base template.

Styles have been applied to textual elements throughout the files by
embedding them in the template so they are available to each separate
file.

My problem is that when I open the Styles and Formatting dialog in
Word 2002, some of the styles have replicated themselves and have
added the word 'char' to the replicated style name. Some styles have
more than one 'char' added to them.

While this doesn't change the look of each document, it still means
that something is not working properly.

Additionally, when I insert these files into one complete document,
the fonts and formatting change unexpectedly. Why would this happen
when I am using the same template for each file, with supposedly the
same styles?

I would appreciate someone's expert opinion on these problems!

Thanks,

Fiona

 

[Fiona]

I hadn't realised that my post to the MS site would end up here - so
I've posted twice by accident.

Thanks for all the material on my first post, it's really helpful.

Fiona

 

[Judy]

i'm having the similiar problem, could you let me know
what information they gave you. Thanks

 

[Fiona]

Hi Judy,

I haven't had any direct replies, but have been searching old posts
about this problem. So far I haven't found any definite solution.
MSWord Service Packs 1 and 2 are supposed to help, but I can't see an
improvement.

From what I've read I don't think I will be able to avoid the 'char'
problem, because my documents require styles to be applied to parts of
a paragraph as well as to whole paragraphs. This seems to be what
creates the 'char'.

At the moment we are experimenting with older versions of MSWord, to
see if they're more stable. So far we haven't had any luck, as
diagrammatic elements get mucked up in the conversion.

I'm still learning about the situation, but I suspect it'll be
something we may just have to live with. If you find out anything
more useful, please post it for me!

Good luck,

Fiona

 

[Bob S]

From what I've read I don't think I will be able to avoid the 'char'
problem, because my documents require styles to be applied to parts of
a paragraph as well as to whole paragraphs. This seems to be what
creates the 'char'.

You need to be a little more precise here. What creates the problem is
trying to apply a PARAGRAPH style to a portion of a paragraph. This is
impossible to actually accomplish. Word 2002 tries to help you by
automatically creating a CHARACTER style with the same font etc and
applying that instead.

If you created your own character style and applied it, Word would not
create "char" styles for you.

If your reason for attempting to apply paragraph styles to portions of
paragraphs is for lead-in emphasis (applying a Heading style to the
first few words of a body paragraph), then you are inadvertently using
the new lead-in emphasis feature. This feature is not mentioned in the
Help files because of some gross oversight. This feature actually uses
and requires the "char" styles. If you update your installation to
current service pack level, you should stop seeing these particular
"char" styles in the task pane.

Word 2002 also introduces a "style separator" as a replacement for the
"hidden paragraph mark trick", which is another way to have two
paragraph styles in what looks visually like one paragraph. This isn't
in the Help files either. Perhaps they should be called the Helpless
files.

If you have some other reason for trying to apply a paragraph style to
a portion of a paragraph, you should explain what you are trying to
accomplish and someone may be able to tell you a better way to do it.
Keep in mind that a paragraph has exactly one paragraph style, so any
attempt to apply a paragraph style to a portion of a paragraph is
doomed to have an "interesting" result.

Bob S

 

[Clive Huggan]

Bob,

Thank you for the interesting information you have provided for Fiona.

I'd like to pursue your comment "If you created your own character style and
applied it, Word would not create 'char' styles for you."

I use a version of Word that does not apply "char" to style names (Word 2001
for the Macintosh). I started to do what Fiona is doing because Microsoft
promoted it as a valuable new feature in this version. I agree that it is. I
find it extremely useful, especially for quickly adding distinctive textual
comments (neither I nor my clients like Word's "Comment" feature for the
sort of work we do, especially because some reviewers of our documents do
their work on hard copies).

Sometimes I apply the style (which I call "comment,ct") to a whole paragraph
when the comment is separate from any of the document's text. The style
definition has 5 characteristics different from ordinary body text: font
Arial, 9 pt, italic, font colour blue, line spacing at least 12 pt. It
really stands out, on screen or on hard copy.

When I want to apply the style to a whole paragraph in this way, I click in
the paragraph and key as follows [translating to Windows-speak]:
Control-Shift-s followed by ct followed by pressing the Enter key. This is
very fast and conveniently avoids my having to reach for the mouse.

Equally often, though, I want to apply the style to only several words that
I have typed in to convey a comment somewhere in a paragraph. In that case I
do the same as above except that I precede it by dragging across the
commentary words to select them. And as I mentioned, Word 2001 does not add
"char" to the style name.

In this latter situation, however, it would be better if I could apply
character formatting using a keystroke to produce the same 5 formatting
characteristics as the "comment,ct" paragraph style -- but as a character
style. But I have not been able to discover a command to do this, on which I
could base a keystroke.

Do you have any clues as to how I could do this without having to reach for
the mouse?

You may wonder why I want to find a solution when I have no problem with
this recent "char" phenomenon. It's because my colleagues are saddled with
it in Word 2002 and I'd like to help them to avoid it.

--Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
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[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Clive,

In this latter situation, however, it would be better if I could apply
character formatting using a keystroke to produce the same 5 formatting
characteristics as the "comment,ct" paragraph style -- but as a character
style. But I have not been able to discover a command to do this, on which I
could base a keystroke.

In WinWord, we can use Tools/Customize/Commands/Keyboard, Category: Styles to
assign a style to a keyboard shortcut. Does that not work in MacWord?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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[Clive Huggan]

Hi Clive,

In WinWord, we can use Tools/Customize/Commands/Keyboard, Category: Styles to
assign a style to a keyboard shortcut. Does that not work in MacWord?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

Cindy,

Thank you for querying this. The answer is "yes", and your response has led
me to see what I had done wrongly.

If it's of any interest: I had been under the impression, for some time,
that the keyboard shortcut did not apply character styles. That wasn't
through failing to try.

Prompted by your querying me, though, I retraced my steps and found that my
Normal template had a style named "Style1" (i.e., the default term for a new
style) without my being aware of it, which applied only the body text style
on which it was based. (I will have inadvertently created this long ago,
perhaps being interrupted while I was doing it.)

When I created the style for my comment text, coincidentally I called it
"style1" [lower case] for want of anything else, since I was only testing
the concept. When I applied what I thought was that style, the earlier style
was actually applied, which did not change the appearance of the body text.
Hence I thought that a character style could not be applied by keystrokes.
Of course, I should have seen the answer in the Styles pop-down box...

I'm told a man called Homer Simpson is known to say "D'oh" or something in
these circumstances!

Anyway, I now have a character style that I can apply by keyboard shortcut,
and my colleagues can do likewise without causing the "char" problem.

Thank you, Cindy -- and to Bob for opening up the discussion!

--Clive Huggan

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Clive,

Anyway, I now have a character style that I can apply by keyboard shortcut,
and my colleagues can do likewise without causing the "char" problem.

Great !

Cindy

 

[Fiona]

Hi Bob,

The problem occurs whether I use paragraph or character styles. We
figure we may just have to live with it.

What we are doing is displaying some words within a paragraph as a
different font to the main paragraph font. It's not for lead-in
emphasis.

For example, while the main body text of a paragraph is BellMT, some
names need to be in Arial. Other names in the same paragraph might
need to be in Courier. Other text will be in GoudyOldStyle. This is
to highlight semantic differences in the use of particular words.

While I hope there is a cure, I somehow doubt it! But if anyone has
any new ideas I'm all ears.

Thanks

Fiona

ps - In case anyone wants to know, there is no useful way of
transferring the documents into earlier versions of Word or other
desktop publishing apps without disturbing what we've put into them -
as far as we know!