Paragraph style border settings won't stick

[Paul B]

Hi,

I've got a paragraph style that I've attached a left border line
to. The line is solid, width .5 pts, and color is automatic.

I keep trying to set the line to .75 pts width and color blue,
but it has no effect. Even switching to the Shading tab of the
options dialog causes the Border Tab settings to revert while the
dialog is still open.

This is not a critical error to me, but it would be nice to know
what's going on.

Thanks,
p.

 

[Lene Fredborg]

Since you do not describe the exact steps you follow, I don’t know precisely
what you do. In the Borders and Shading dialog box, you must first select the
border style, color and width, then click the icon to the left to apply the
desired border(s) – if you have a border set, you need to click that border
again to apply the new settings. Maybe you are missing this last step.

--
Regards
Lene Fredborg - Microsoft MVP (Word)
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word

 

[Paul B]

Since you do not describe the exact steps you follow, I don’t know precisely
what you do. In the Borders and Shading dialog box, you must first select the
border style, color and width, then click the icon to the left to apply the
desired border(s) – if you have a border set, you need to click that border
again to apply the new settings. Maybe you are missing this last step.

Lene, that last step is exactly what was lacking. Thanks very
much for your help on this.

bb,
p.

 

[Lene Fredborg]

You are welcome. I am glad I could help.

The way the dialog box works is not intuitive. Even though I know how it
works, I sometimes forget to click the border icon myself.

--
Regards
Lene Fredborg - Microsoft MVP (Word)
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'll second that. It is actually logical when you think in terms of anything
other than a box border. Say you want to make the left and right borders red
and heavy and the top and bottom borders blue and thin (don't ask me why you
would want to do this!). You don't want all the borders to change when you
change the color or weight, only the selected ones. Yes, you might select
one of the borders and make the changes and expect them to take effect, but
the way Word works is actually more efficient in that changing the color and
weight changes the current default so that you can then click several of the
borders to apply the same formatting, then change the formatting (if
desired) and click other borders.

But I agree that it's not entirely intuitive, and I also get caught
frequently even though I know better.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Lene Fredborg]

I think the problem is that you can OK out of the dialog box after having
changed settings and that those settings may not be applied to anything.
Since you cannot see clearly see from the design of the Borders tab how
things work, that is not what you expect. Normally, OK means “Apply†and if
you have only changed settings that will not be applied to anything, “Closeâ€
is a more correct label for the button. But this would not work here because
the dialog box has three tabs for different purposes – and you could have
made changes to “OK†on the other tabs. Maybe it would help if a message
appeared when clicking OK if unapplied border settings were found – it could
say something like “You have changed the border style, color or width. Do you
want to apply the new settings to the selected border(s)?â€


--
Regards
Lene Fredborg - Microsoft MVP (Word)
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Ah, but that would drive me crazy when I've just gone in to fiddle with
something to help a user. <g>

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org