L
Larry
Cross-posted from microsoft.public.word.mac:
=====================================
This isn't the regular "where did this mystery character style come
from" problem that we usually associate with Evil Hidden Char styles.
This one's a doozy, and it's affecting two distinct and unconnected
groups within my international company. Here's the scenario:
User Amy creates a document in Mac Word 2004, using a templated set of
paragraph and character styles only -- no local formatting, no
monkeying with the styles as given, and certainly no renaming of
styles. Amy sends me the document to check. I open it in Win Word
2003, and see that Amy has done a great job of obeying the style usage
rules -- except that one of the most commonly used paragraph style
names (possibly THE most commonly used?) -- has been changed to "Char
Char". It's not a character style, and it doesn't have a leading space
in the name; it's just a paragraph style that used to be "READ_PARA",
but is now named "Char Char". Amy swears that she did not change the
style name, and, in fact, while on the phone with me and looking at
the file on her Mac, says, "What are you talking about? It says
"READ_PARA".
Meanwhile (I've just learned), User Bill is engaged in the same
conversation with my colleague, Techie Carla, who works in a
completely separate (physically and functionally) organisation. Amy
and Bill have no connection whatever to one another. Bill is using Mac
Word 2008, but otherwise the symptoms are the same. Oh, except that in
Bill's document, it's style "04BaseText" that is changing to "Char
Char"... and "04BaseText" is, according to Carla, supposed to be the
most commonly used style in Bill's document.
This problem is repeatable; even though Carla and I fix the files of
our respective users and send them back, when we receive updated
versions, we again see that "READ_PARA" (in my case) and
"04BaseText" (in Carla's case) have been changed to "Char Char" in our
Win Word 2003 sessions, while Amy and Bill both insist that no such
change is visible on their screens. Amy and Bill also swear that only
colleagues who have similar editing environments to theirs have ever
touched their files.
Carla and I have never seen anything like this before. Any insights,
anyone?
UPDATE: And now we have freelance user Edgar, working with my
organisation but on a completely different project, having the same
problem as Amy (in my organisation) and Bill (in the other one) were.
Except that it's not style name "READ_PARA" or "04BaseText" that gets
munged, it's style name "STX", which, in Edgar's file, is the most
commonly-used style. Edgar has no relation whatever to Amy or Bill.
=====================================
This isn't the regular "where did this mystery character style come
from" problem that we usually associate with Evil Hidden Char styles.
This one's a doozy, and it's affecting two distinct and unconnected
groups within my international company. Here's the scenario:
User Amy creates a document in Mac Word 2004, using a templated set of
paragraph and character styles only -- no local formatting, no
monkeying with the styles as given, and certainly no renaming of
styles. Amy sends me the document to check. I open it in Win Word
2003, and see that Amy has done a great job of obeying the style usage
rules -- except that one of the most commonly used paragraph style
names (possibly THE most commonly used?) -- has been changed to "Char
Char". It's not a character style, and it doesn't have a leading space
in the name; it's just a paragraph style that used to be "READ_PARA",
but is now named "Char Char". Amy swears that she did not change the
style name, and, in fact, while on the phone with me and looking at
the file on her Mac, says, "What are you talking about? It says
"READ_PARA".
Meanwhile (I've just learned), User Bill is engaged in the same
conversation with my colleague, Techie Carla, who works in a
completely separate (physically and functionally) organisation. Amy
and Bill have no connection whatever to one another. Bill is using Mac
Word 2008, but otherwise the symptoms are the same. Oh, except that in
Bill's document, it's style "04BaseText" that is changing to "Char
Char"... and "04BaseText" is, according to Carla, supposed to be the
most commonly used style in Bill's document.
This problem is repeatable; even though Carla and I fix the files of
our respective users and send them back, when we receive updated
versions, we again see that "READ_PARA" (in my case) and
"04BaseText" (in Carla's case) have been changed to "Char Char" in our
Win Word 2003 sessions, while Amy and Bill both insist that no such
change is visible on their screens. Amy and Bill also swear that only
colleagues who have similar editing environments to theirs have ever
touched their files.
Carla and I have never seen anything like this before. Any insights,
anyone?
UPDATE: And now we have freelance user Edgar, working with my
organisation but on a completely different project, having the same
problem as Amy (in my organisation) and Bill (in the other one) were.
Except that it's not style name "READ_PARA" or "04BaseText" that gets
munged, it's style name "STX", which, in Edgar's file, is the most
commonly-used style. Edgar has no relation whatever to Amy or Bill.