Sol,
What do you want to achieve by removing hard-wired styles? Fewer styles to
scroll through in the styles pop-down menu or Formatting palette? If so,
you'd be better off applying styles by keyboard shortcuts, which document
professionals almost invariably do. Scrolling drives me nuts.
More information is under the heading "How styles are applied" on page 91 of
some notes on the way I use Word for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your
Will", which are available as a free download from the Word MVPs' website
(
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html). If that's relevant,
back-track to "Styles and templates ‹ the keys to consistency and saving
time" starting on page 86.
[Note: "Bend Word to your will" is designed to be used electronically and
most subjects are self-contained dictionary-style entries. If you decide to
read more widely than the item I've referred to, it's important to read the
front end of the document -- especially pages 3 and 5 -- so you can select
some Word settings that will allow you to use the document effectively.]
If all you want is to simplify your documents, don't bother -- removing the
hard-wired styles will hardly make the document smaller. The reality is:
Word is quintessentially a styles-based word processor. Once a document goes
beyond say 30 pages, using styles produces a more robust document and has
many advantages -- about 20, which are discussed at pages 89-90 of "Bend
Word to Your Will".
But you're going to tell me it's for another reason, aren't you? ;-)
[For what it's worth, I succeeded in removing some built-in styles four
years ago when I was using Word 2001, by removing them via Word 5.1a, the
last of the made-for-Mac versions of Word. Or maybe they were only removed
from the interface. Knowing what I know now, I'm so glad that a
bright-eyed, bushy-tailed bloke named John McGhie, on a newly discovered
discussion group titled microsoft.public.mac.office.word, warned me off the
idea. Knowing what I know now, I was heading on a suicide mission. I was
particularly influenced by John's notion of setting up vulnerability to
Microsoft modifying a characteristic of a style, or the styles mechanism
itself, in future.] ;-)
[I'll be unable to visit this NG starting 14 hours from now, for 2-3 days
afterwards. I'm going interstate in my role as an Assistant Research Officer
in Early Childhood Development, otherwise known as a grandfather, and *all*
other activities stop!]
Cheers,
Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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