Indents and font styles are applied globally,when they shouldn't be...

[empt]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

I'm using Word 11.5.0..........

In my documents, every time I attempt to make a change to the indentation and/or font styles of some specific text, it makes the change to the entire document.

For example, when I Boldface some text, it Boldfaces all the text in the document.

someone please help, cause it's getting very irritating

 

[empt]

BTW, it seems to occur mostly when there is a chart involved.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

I'm using Word 11.5.0..........

In my documents, every time I attempt to make a change to the indentation
and/or font styles of some specific text, it makes the change to the entire
document.

For example, when I Boldface some text, it Boldfaces all the text in the
document.

someone please help, cause it's getting very irritating

Yep. One of Word's stupidest settings. And it has severe competition
from the rest of the program
..
Automatically update styles.

Chief among the stupidity is where this setting is hidden in Word 2004.

I can't bring myself to describe it. Help È Microsoft Help and type
"Automatically update styles" into the search.
Press the pulsing blue search button (return does nothing sensible.
Apple Human Interface guidelines? We've heard of 'em)
Then click on the top entry.
Read and be amazed.
No. I dunno what they were thinking of either.

 

[empt]

I reset the default style, which seems to have fixed the problem in new documents, but old ones still have problems....

But I didn't know it was going to automatically update my newly-reset style, so thanks for clueing me in on that.....

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

1. Go to Format | Style.
2. Select the style you’re using (presumably Normal) in the task pane
and click on the down arrow to display the menu. (if you keep the
cursor in text that shows this problem, the right style will
automatically be selected. It's possible you'll need to do this for more
than one style)
3. Choose Modify.
4. In the Modify Style dialog, clear the check box for “Automatically
update.â€
5. Check the box for “Add to template.â€
6. Press OK to close the dialog.

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

Contra Elliott, this setting can be very useful for certain styles,
maybe just the TOC styles.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Contra Elliott, this setting can be very useful for certain styles,
maybe just the TOC styles.

OK. I'll give you TOC for the first time you ever touch a TOC in your
life, provided you did learn how to drive the format styles dialogue
first.

Maybe footnotes too?

But why oh why hide it way down there and have it default to checked?

I bet it has frustrated far more beginners than it has helped.

It is up there with the bullets and numbering dialogue. A childish
interface plonked over a halfway decent facility to make it useless to
expert and beginner alike.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

But why oh why hide it way down there and have it default to checked?

It doesn't default to checked. Some sort of bug randomly checks it for
Normal, began with Word 2002, imported to the Mac with 2004 (I don't
*think* we got reports of this with X or 2001). Definitely a bug. Fixed
in 2008, maybe--Normal no longer has an "automatically update" checkbox,
which doesn't necessarily mean the same bug can't still turn it on and
now we'll be unable to turn it off. But I don't think that's happened yet.

Daiya

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I reset the default style, which seems to have fixed the problem in new documents, but old ones still have problems....

Sorry, yes, you'll need to fix each old document separately. Style
settings are generally per-document, not across the app, and setting
defaults only applies to new documents.