formatting styles in Word 2003

[Roscoe]

I'm stumped. It seems much harder than it used to be, but when I edit
a paragragh with an attached style, the paragragh formatting shows as ,
say "heading 1 + indent 0.5". Great, love that, beats guessing.
However, when I want to make that the default for that style, it seems
way too hard and inconsistent.

What am I missing?

 

[LH]

You must now select the entire paragraph when working with paragraph
styling. Also Word's so-called helpfulness can be nonintuitive. In
TOOLS, OPTIONS, EDIT, consider deselecting the following settings
"prompt to update style", "use smart paragraph selection" and in TOOLS,
AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS, AUTOFORMAT consider deselecting "preserve styles"