Controlling Styles in Master and Sub Doc

[stevef]

I have a 350 page doc that is broken into several subdocs. It was
created by uncounted numbers of people and has a real mess of a
collection of styles. I want to clean the doc and sub docs to have a
limited number of styles available and in use. To do this I have tried
deleting the styles from the Organizer and then saving the full
document. When I close and reopen the master and the subs the styles
appear as they did before I made any changes. Why? What am I doing
wrong?
I have tried to copy the standard styles from a new document (in
Organizer) and the new standard styles are also not retained when the
master and subs are saved and reopened.
HELP

Thanks
Steve

 

[Margaret Aldis]

You will find this easiest to tackle if you combine the documents into a
single document. (See
http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/general/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm for why
Master documents are to be avoided unless you really have to use them, and
why they should be confined to final assembly only.)

However you approach this, you are going to have to clean up the styles in
the component documents before you combine them, or you'll end up importing
the old styles into the fresh document. If it's a real mess it's often
simplest to clear out the styles and formatting completely before you start
and reapply - you'll have to scroll through the whole thing anyway.
Alternatively you can use a two-shot process - paste the old document into a
new shell with the new styles and whittle away at the formatting (using the
Styles and Formatting pane, search and replace, and whatever other tricks
work for you) until you are only using your new styles, and then paste again
(or Insert File) into a fresh document shell. Be warned though that styles
can lurk in dark cracks in Word documents - pasting tables can sometimes
bring hidden styles.