Paragraph Styles

[Jackie]

I've been doing a lot of reformatting recently. I've found in a few
documents that when I try to apply a style, e.g heading 1, the style
being applied is e.g heading1,level1,caps,bold. It's as though that
'formatting' has attached itself to my style. The only way I've found
to get round it is to copy my document into a blank template, make the
whole document 'normal' style, then apply the styles. I am not able
to apply the styles to the paragraphs without doing this. it only
happens in a few documents but am wondering why it happens.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I suspect that Word is preserving direct font formatting when you apply a
paragraph style. Does this formatting persist if you select the paragraph
and press Ctrl+Spacebar (before or after applying the style)? You could also
try pressing Ctrl+Q to reset the paragraph formatting before applying the
style. Also, clearing the check box for "Keep track of formatting" (Tools |
Options | Edit) would probably prevent you from *seeing* this formatting
information, but the direct formatting would still remain.

 

[Jackie]

I tried both of these (which I didn't know about - thanks) but neither
worked. If I apply 'normal' to the paragraph then try to re-apply the
correct style, it won't let me. Also if I try to delete the style
from the document it treats it as an embedded heading style and won't
let me. As a matter of interest, what does cntrl spacebar do?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Ctrl+Spacebar removes direct font formatting. Ctrl+Q removes direct
paragraph formatting. Both reset the formatting to that defined for the
applied style.

In this case it sounds as if the document may be corrupt. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm

 

[Jackie]

thanks Suzanne. Neither of these worked in my case. It's as though
the formatting has been picked up and 'attached itself' to the style.
As I've said I can fix it by copying/pasting, but have to copy only the
text as copying takes the formatting info into the new document.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

If the style name you are seeing (when you choose Modify) is literally
"heading1,level1,caps,bold" with commas, not + signs, then it looks like the
Heading 1 built-in style has picked up some alias names. You might be
successful in renaming the style to remove the aliases (everything after the
commas), and if necessary modifying the style itself back to the format you
want.

You also see a comma list in the Styles and Formatting pane for styles
automatically created when you have "Define styles based on my formatting"
on (though the actual names are different), so you might want to have a look
and if necessary turn it off. However, I don't think that usually shows a
mix of built-in stylenames and formatting so at the end of the day this may
be a corrupt document.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Ignore second paragraph below - I wasn't seeing what I thought I was seeing
when I tested "Define Styles based on my formatting".

 

[Jackie]

It is commas only Margaret. the quickest way I've found of fixing it
to copy the whole document and paste is using 'match destination
formatting'. This changes the style to normal and allows me to apply
the correct one. Applying normal and reapplying the style in the
original document did not work it only reapplied the style showing the
additional formatting. I'm just a bit baffled by this and think
document corruption is the only explanation. Thanks to all for your
help.