Navigating the Style lists

[JD]

Hi folks,
I've just upgraded myself into chaos -- I"m doing my first Word
project in quite awhile -- a first project on a newly installed Word X
on spanking new Panther machine with lots of horsepower and have
discovered that the world has changed while I've been in FrameMaker
land... This project involves developing a set of large templates
designed to single-source to several endproducts, many requiring
3rd-party transformations. Docs must be as structured as all get out
and styled religiously. OK. I've got a mile-long list of styles now
and could practically go make a cup of coffee in the time that it
takes to scroll through the list to apply said styles to the test
documents. None of my old keyboard shortcuts are working to move
rapidly through the list --command shift S just gets me to the
box--typing the first few letters of the style doesn't jump me through
the list. I have been pawing through word help and am getting nowhere.
Am I supposed to remember every one of those style names to the letter
and type them all out completely?

The people who are going to be using these templates are going to go
nuts if they have to sit through a mile long wysiwyg scroll for each
style application they make. Am I missing something here? What
happened to the autocomplete feature? Is there an alternative that
replaces it (besides mousing and scrolling)?
Yikes! Suggestions? Therapy?
Thanks,
JD

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi folks,
I've just upgraded myself into chaos -- I"m doing my first Word
project in quite awhile -- a first project on a newly installed Word X
on spanking new Panther machine with lots of horsepower and have
discovered that the world has changed while I've been in FrameMaker
land... This project involves developing a set of large templates
designed to single-source to several endproducts, many requiring
3rd-party transformations. Docs must be as structured as all get out
and styled religiously. OK. I've got a mile-long list of styles now
and could practically go make a cup of coffee in the time that it
takes to scroll through the list to apply said styles to the test
documents. None of my old keyboard shortcuts are working to move
rapidly through the list --command shift S just gets me to the
box--typing the first few letters of the style doesn't jump me through
the list. I have been pawing through word help and am getting nowhere.
Am I supposed to remember every one of those style names to the letter
and type them all out completely?

The people who are going to be using these templates are going to go
nuts if they have to sit through a mile long wysiwyg scroll for each
style application they make. Am I missing something here? What
happened to the autocomplete feature? Is there an alternative that
replaces it (besides mousing and scrolling)?
Yikes! Suggestions? Therapy?
Thanks,
JD

Yep, Word 5.1 was a huge improvement upon its successors.

Here is the workaround for X
1. Give your styles shortcut names in the format ->style -> modify panel
i.e after the long name, a comma and a shorter one.
e.g. Bullet Normal Indent becomes Bullet Normal Indent,bi
2. When using the styles, open the formatting panel and turn down the
font triangle. (For extra credit, bury all but one pixel of it off the
edge of the screen) [1] [2]
3. Now cmd-shift-s bi <ret> will drop you into Bullet Normal Indent
style, just like Word 5 almost.

This workaround is quite usable. I reserve single letter short names
for my most frequent styles like body,b list,l. I went for 2 letter
names where they made sense, like h1,h2,h3,h4... even though there is
probably some doofus default cmd-mumble for the top heading levels. It
also worked for built in character styles like emphasis,e

It ain't auto complete, which kinda sorta works on the right phase of
the moon for fonts, but it saves the same amount of typing and after a
while the short names get stuck in your spinal chord and don't waste
too much brain interrupt processing.

[1]. I'm told this is fixed in 2004. Shoulda been, I whinged about it
often enough.
[2] No, I am not joking. When the formatting palette is open the stupid
stupid style box stays shut. What were they thinking?

I was setting up some styles for a customer yesterday, and was reminded
about another item of brainlessness in the format style box. When at
all possible, Word will highlight the current style, but make sure it
is one line above the top of the visible style names.

Sometimes I sit there aghast at what made it past QC

 

[matt neuburg]

documents. None of my old keyboard shortcuts are working to move
rapidly through the list --command shift S just gets me to the
box--typing the first few letters of the style doesn't jump me through
the list. I have been pawing through word help and am getting nowhere.
Am I supposed to remember every one of those style names to the letter
and type them all out completely?

Let's say we want the current selected paragraph to be heading 1 style.
There are two possibilities:

[1] Assign an alias, e.g. "h1", to Heading 1. Now you can go
command-shift-S h1 Return.

[2] If you've no alias, go command-shift-S hea up-arrow down-arrow. Now
you're looking at a heading style and can use arrows to navigate them.
Hit Return when you like the one you're seeing.

m.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi JD,

In addition to all the good advice you got from Elliott and Matt, you might
want to download and read through the style sections in Clive Huggans's
"Bend Word to Your Will":
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm> (Note: If you're using
Safari, you may have to hit Reload once or twice; IE will be fine.)

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[JD]

Beth, Elliott, and Matt, Thanks for the great suggestions! I did
download the How to Bend.... and its wonderful -- heartbreaking what
one has to jump through to get there, but wonderful. The workaround
with little aliases is peachy and my fingers and those of my users
thank you.

One more question, though, since I don't know what is happening on the
Windows side of this query -- do Windows users of my templates benefit
from the alias assignment? Or do they not need it as there is
autocompletion on the windows side (is there?)? I'd test it myself but
my Dell is in the hospital with a zapped powersupply. -JD

 

[Elliott Roper]

Beth, Elliott, and Matt, Thanks for the great suggestions! I did
download the How to Bend.... and its wonderful -- heartbreaking what
one has to jump through to get there, but wonderful. The workaround
with little aliases is peachy and my fingers and those of my users
thank you.

One more question, though, since I don't know what is happening on the
Windows side of this query -- do Windows users of my templates benefit
from the alias assignment? Or do they not need it as there is
autocompletion on the windows side (is there?)? I'd test it myself but
my Dell is in the hospital with a zapped powersupply. -JD

I think it works in PC land. I was just telling a colleague how I
/improved/ his template, and he appeared to not be fazed.