Some (not all) losing heading style formatting

[Mike]

We have a 170 page document that is not opening correctly on *some* people's
systems (Windows XP, Word 2002). I have checked options, including
compatibility options, and cannot find any consistent item that would be
causing this problem. The problem appears to be primarily the heading
styles, which are losing not only their numbering but almost all of their
formatting (heading 1 retains the kerning option, but that's it). Copying
the heading styles from another document doesn't work either. At this point
the solution has been to copy and paste the document (all but the last
paragraph) to a new document. This works, but it does not answer the
question why this is happening - and only on a few people's systems. The
problem may be the source document, but without knowing what the problem is
(and why it's inconsistent) I don't know what to look for. ANY ideas,
however strange, would be welcome.

TIA,
Mike

 

[Robert M. Franz]

Hello Mike

We have a 170 page document that is not opening correctly on *some* people's
systems (Windows XP, Word 2002). I have checked options, including
compatibility options, and cannot find any consistent item that would be
causing this problem. The problem appears to be primarily the heading
styles, which are losing not only their numbering but almost all of their
formatting (heading 1 retains the kerning option, but that's it). Copying
the heading styles from another document doesn't work either. At this point
the solution has been to copy and paste the document (all but the last
paragraph) to a new document. This works, but it does not answer the
question why this is happening - and only on a few people's systems. The
problem may be the source document, but without knowing what the problem is
(and why it's inconsistent) I don't know what to look for. ANY ideas,
however strange, would be welcome.

Since you report the problem with headings only, a numbering issue would
be my first guess. How is the numbering defined? For "good practice", see:

See the section on "Numbering, bullets, Headings, Outlines" (by Shauna
Kelly)
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/
Word's numbering explained (by John McGhie)
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm
How to do it in VBA (by Dave Rado)
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Numbering/CureListNumbering.htm

I couldn't really imagine that this should change, say, the font of a
heading, but the numbering properties (number, indentation), that is not
unheard of.

HTH
Robert

 

[Mike]

I thought I had already checked this but it turns out the problem is the
'automatically update document styles' setting. I'm still curious why some
folks normal template causes the problem, and others don't, but at least I
know where to start looking.

Mike


It is acting like it's updating from another template, but

 

[Klaus Linke]

I thought I had already checked this but it turns out the problem is the
'automatically update document styles' setting. I'm still curious why some
folks normal template causes the problem, and others don't, but at least I
know where to start looking.

Glad you nailed it.
"Automatically update document styles" is notorious for making trouble if the styles are numbered.
How a bunch of outline numbered styles is numbered depends on the list template, and that doesn't necessarily travel along nicely if you copy one or several of the styles from one doc/dot (attached template = likely Normal.dot in this case) to another.

Regards,
Klaus