Fighting with templates (again)

[RegUK]

Finally got tired of trying to force a new template to update styles properly - see posts passim and, having read the excellent advice from MVP forum and this newsgroup, decided to start again

Renamed Normal.do
opened a document with the new Normal.dot on return to Word (2002) (checked to make sure it was created where I expected - it was
Before I started defining the new styles I thought I'd check the oultine list definitions
Two of them offered me the chance to 'reset' and on pressing the button they did indeed change
I carried on for a while defining my changes: - updated header styles so they were based on 'no style' changed fonts etc. added outlined numbering (actually bullets) to List Bullet styl
Saved the new document as a template

All this went well and I managed to apply the template to several documents I have been having trouble with but I have a few questions

1. Why did I have to 'reset' default numbering/bullet styles in the 'virgin' normal.do
2. Given that they had to be reset am I now working with a 'pre-corrupt' template and just waiting for an axe to fall as documents gro
3. Why, when I uncheck the 'update document styles' in the templates and add-ins dialogue of my new template does it re-check itself when I re-open the dialogu
4. Why, when I copy styles (three times, as recommended here), does the target document first take on an 'original' style (as defined in my virgin normal.dot) initially and then update properly (to my template style) if I select text and re-apply the style
5. Why does my once-virgin normal.dot now have a style called 'heading 6, heading 6 char' which could not be deleted but could be renamed to heading
6. Why do some of my 'converted' ie: new template applied, have some styles which cannot be deleted eg: 'centered' in the 'formats in use' list but don't appear in the organizer list nor as far as I can tell in the documen

Having followed a few threads I appreciate the answer may be "because Word does that sometimes" but can someone give me any kind of warm, fuzzy confidence that the document we are now producing are not going to corrupt at a later stage

I'm trying hard to implement some standards here but people are rapidly coming to the conclusion they are better off ignoring styles, templates, etc and just applying whatever formatting directly to the text

Any comments/commiserations/advice welcome (other than suggesting we switch to Star Office

Reg

 

[Jezebel]

In re-doubling your efforts, perhaps you are losing sight of your objectives
... Two bob's worth --

First, the primary purpose of styles is to manage the *content* of your
documents. If you're trying to introduce standards across a group, the first
task is to decide what 'heading 1' *means*, not what it looks like -- that's
a subsequent and lesser decision. This matters a lot if you intend to use
your documents as part of an information system or related to web pages.

Second, you have to be brutally simple: a) because users won't tolerate
complexity, and b) you'll otherwise spend too much time fighting Word's
stylistic quirks. The more styles you have, the more work you have to do.
The challenge is to find the smallest possible set that works for you.

Third, for any living document, every deviation from template (any
formatting applied directly) commits you to extra workload for ever. If
you're strict to template you can reformat the document at any time in one
step; if there are deviations you have to stop and do extra work, every
time.

Finally got tired of trying to force a new template to update styles

properly - see posts passim and, having read the excellent advice from MVP
forum and this newsgroup, decided to start again:

Renamed Normal.dot
opened a document with the new Normal.dot on return to Word (2002)

(checked to make sure it was created where I expected - it was)

Before I started defining the new styles I thought I'd check the oultine list definitions.
Two of them offered me the chance to 'reset' and on pressing the button they did indeed change.
I carried on for a while defining my changes: - updated header styles so

they were based on 'no style' changed fonts etc. added outlined numbering
(actually bullets) to List Bullet style

Saved the new document as a template.

All this went well and I managed to apply the template to several

documents I have been having trouble with but I have a few questions:

1. Why did I have to 'reset' default numbering/bullet styles in the 'virgin' normal.dot
2. Given that they had to be reset am I now working with a 'pre-corrupt'

template and just waiting for an axe to fall as documents grow

3. Why, when I uncheck the 'update document styles' in the templates and

add-ins dialogue of my new template does it re-check itself when I re-open
the dialogue

4. Why, when I copy styles (three times, as recommended here), does the

target document first take on an 'original' style (as defined in my virgin
normal.dot) initially and then update properly (to my template style) if I
select text and re-apply the style.

5. Why does my once-virgin normal.dot now have a style called 'heading 6,

heading 6 char' which could not be deleted but could be renamed to heading 6

6. Why do some of my 'converted' ie: new template applied, have some

styles which cannot be deleted eg: 'centered' in the 'formats in use' list
but don't appear in the organizer list nor as far as I can tell in the
document

Having followed a few threads I appreciate the answer may be "because Word

does that sometimes" but can someone give me any kind of warm, fuzzy
confidence that the document we are now producing are not going to corrupt
at a later stage.

I'm trying hard to implement some standards here but people are rapidly

coming to the conclusion they are better off ignoring styles, templates, etc
and just applying whatever formatting directly to the text.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Not definitive, but here's my contribution to greater understanding and
happiness ;-)

1. Why did I have to 'reset' default numbering/bullet styles in the

'virgin' normal.dot

The settings of the 'list gallery' aren't stored in Normal.dot - I believe
they are registry settings.

2. Given that they had to be reset am I now working with a 'pre-corrupt'

template and just waiting for an axe to fall as documents grow

No-one can guarantee it won't, but if you work in a consistent way using
styles there is no certainty it will either FWIW, I work on long and
complex documents regularly and I don't run into corruptions.

3. Why, when I uncheck the 'update document styles' in the templates and

add-ins dialogue of my new template does it re-check itself when I re-open
the dialogue

This sounds like you might have saved that setting in the template, which is
a mistake. You can't change it in the template via the dialog, but you can
run the following from the immediate window (Alt-F11 Ctrl-G)

ActiveDocument.UpdateStylesOnOpen = False

4. Why, when I copy styles (three times, as recommended here), does the

target document first take on an 'original' style (as defined in my virgin
normal.dot) initially and then update properly (to my template style) if I
select text and re-apply the style.

Dunno - but apparently odd behaviour here is often a logical result from the
cascading of styles and the order of copying.

5. Why does my once-virgin normal.dot now have a style called 'heading 6,

heading 6 char' which could not be deleted but could be renamed to heading 6

Word 2002 makes explicit the fact that you can apply a paragraph style to a
piece of text and have it behave as a character style. The char styles tend
to become visible when you have Keep Track of Formatting on, and I've found
may appear on copy and paste, even if you are very particular about *not*
using para styles as char styles. More information at
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MyFavTip.htm#CharStyl

6. Why do some of my 'converted' ie: new template applied, have some

styles which cannot be deleted eg: 'centered' in the 'formats in use' list
but don't appear in the organizer list nor as far as I can tell in the
document

Sounds like that is not a style but 'formatting' (made visible by 'keep
track of formatting). Try 'selecting all instances' and seeing what
formatting (style and/or direct) you have.

I'm trying hard to implement some standards here but people are rapidly

coming to the conclusion they are better off ignoring styles, templates, etc
and just applying whatever formatting directly to the text.
Fight hard against this - it is exactly that behaviour that will cause
problems and corruptions further down the track. Working consistently using
styles is the key to success - if everyone does their own thing, on top of
everyone else's thing, documents get tied in knots!

You must make it easy for users to use the standards, and hard(er) to ignore
them. Provide toolbars and menus for your styles, remove the bullets and
numbering buttons out of temptation's way, and generally try to 'package'
the solution the way you want it.

Good luck

 

[RegUK]

Jezebe

Thanks for the general advice - I appreciate the potential of styles, etc which is why I'm trying to define templates that can be adopted as standard within the organisation. However, to get the point across I will have to actually achieve something with a template first!

This, unfortunately, involves me taking a whole series of documents entitled for example 'Terms of Reference' which have different layouts, styles, header, footers, sections, titles, bulleted and linked lists, etc,etc,etc and attempting to do clever things with them (like cross referencing, hyperlinking, general document management stuff)- making the styles match is only the first step but from my understanding I will miss out on some of the built-in power if I don't apply some standard features like Heading 1, etc

So I created a template with a minmal set of styles - normal, header 1-4, list bullet, body text, header, footer, footnote, footnote reference - and a layout based on what all those documents where *supposed* to look like in the first place

But when I tried to attach the template to the documents and implement the style changes it all went baggy at the bottom and Word died. I trawled around here and read up on the advice from MVPs about template design and the problems with mangled styles and decided to start from scratch with a fresh 'normal.dot' and work from there. This has proved successful thus far. However as I said in the OP there are still some quirks hanging around and before I try and present the new templates as a standard set I need to be sure that what I have isn't going to corrupt over time and leave me with another set of documents to fix

Reg

 

[Margaret Aldis]

But when I tried to attach the template to the documents and implement the

style changes it all went baggy at the bottom and Word died.

One extra piece of advice following from this - if you attach the template
and update styles for *existing* documents that won't do anything to fix
page layout, direct formatting, incipient corruptions (complex tables, messy
lists etc. etc.).

You will get the best results (showing what you can achieve as early as
possible) with brand new documents. Document conversion and legacy documents
are a whole different ball game - if this is a big issue in your
organization there are certainly things you can do to help (and obviously
having solid target designs and templates is part of that), but 'automatic'
style updating is probably not the major focus. Almost certainly you will
need to paste text into a fresh document shell - via some 'cleaned out' form
(some people simply strip all the formatting out completely, but you can
often find semi-automatic ways of making use of what tagging and formatting
is already there provided you go via a 'quarantine' document).

 

[RegUK]

Yeah, just figured this out the hard way

Thank

Reg