Formatting One Word Formats ENTIRE Document

[Owen]

My install of Word 2004 has recently started misbehaving. Whenever I
choose a selection (a word, a sentence, a paragraph, etc.) and apply
text formatting to it (bold, underline, alignment, etc.) that
formatting gets applied to the ENTIRE document. Clicking UNDO removes
the erroneous formatting from all of the parts of the document where it
shouldn't have been applied and retains it where I want it to be
applied.

Anybody else run into this?

Ideas?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Yeah, the style you are using (probably Normal) is set to Automatically
Update, which means that when you change one word, Word thinks that means
you want to redefine the style. This is a good thing for some styles, but
not Normal.

To fix:
Use Format | Style--the style in question will come up already selected, or
select Normal in the left column, click Modify, uncheck the "automatically
update" box, check the "add to template" box (which means changes will be
saved to the Normal template, which is used to generate all new documents)
and you should be fine.

For better understanding of what a style is and the problem, see these
links:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/TipsOnStyles.html
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/FormatOfTextChanges.html

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm
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