issues importing styles in Word 2007

[K. Krueger]

I use MadCap Flare at work, and it creates a Word output that is...less than
spectacular. In order to fix all of the style and formatting issues, I
created a Word template that includes all of the Flare styles, re-named as
they appear in the Word output, but with correct formatting.

The goal is to create a Word output via Flare, and then to import styles
from the template so that the output has the correct formatting. This works,
but only partially. Some styles import perfectly, but others import with
completely different formatting than is set in either the template or the
output document. Sometimes the indention is different, sometimes the
paragraph spacing, etc. and the style imports the same (incorrect) way
regardless of what document I import it into, even though those settings
don't appear anywhere!

I went back and made sure that I checked "new documents based on this
template" whenever I updated a style, and none of them are set to
automatically update.

Does anyone have an idea why some styles import correctly when others don't,
or how I can fix the problem? I appreciate any help you can give me.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

One way to get the right styles is to save your Flare-outputted Word
document, then in Word create a New document based on the template
that contains your correctly formatted styles, then use Insert >
Object (way over at the right) > Text from File to insert that Flare-
outputted file. The new formatting should override the formatting
provided by Flare for all the same-named styles.

 

[gr8auntieokie]

Are the styles in your Word template ALL set to be based on Normal style?
because if the styles are based on other styles, THAT could be causing your
formatting problems. It can take extra time to re-create and/or revise the
styles you want to use in your template so that they're all based on Normal
style, but when you're having problems such as you describe, taking the extra
time to create and format the styles as based on your Normal style will be
worth the extra effort.

Also, I suggest that rather than just saving a template with your new styles
and then importing those styles into the MadCap Flare-generated document,
save the styles you want to use as a Quick Style set. Then, after you open
the MCF-generated document, click on the "American Airlines" button (that's
what I call it) and select your "MadCap Flare Quick Style" set. As soon as
you change the Quick Style set, ALL your styles should automatically fix
themselves in the document... and this is especially so if you've made sure
that all the styles are based on your Normal style.