Formatting in Word 2004 going crazy

[doclabyrinth]

I am working on my resume and want the categories (Education,
Experience, etc.) to be in small caps. When I highlight these words
and these words alone, and click "Small Caps" in the drop-down Format
menu, the entire document goes to small caps.

Whatever I click, in fact, such as Bullets, causes the entire document
to be bulleted, even though I am highlighting only the parts I want to
format.

I have never had this problem before today (along with the weird
spelling-and-grammar-checker telling me that every single word on the
left margin in an ordinary paragraph should be capitalized--as if it
were the first word in a sentence).

I have not changed my settings or done anything differently, or
anything at all. I just started a document as usual and suddenly got
all of these strange responses.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

With the cursor in a problematic word, click on Format | Style. Click
Modify. At the bottom of the dialog, UNCHECK automatically update, and
CHECK add to template. OK everything and exit back to document. If the
problem occurs in other documents, repeat the same procedure.

The problem is that a style is set to automatically update. Having the
cursor in a problematic word will ensure that the problematic style is
preselected when you click Format | Style. It is possible, depending on
how the resume is formatted, that you will need to repeat this procedure
for more than one style in the same document.
Fuller explanation (written for WinWord) here:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm
(hit refresh a few times if using safari)