Style box added on 2007 QAT shows nothing

[Mark Tangard]

We were confounded by MS's decision to remove the Style box from the
default interface in 2007, but were able to add it to the QAT using the
Customize dialog.

Just recently it seems to have lost its innards. When you click its
drop-down arrow you get a long dropdown list as before, but it's *empty*
except for one entry showing the style at the cursor.

Nghghh?? Any ideas why this happens? Happens in every doc. Typing a
style's name or alias in the box applies it, as it should. But that
only works if you've memorized them! Tried removing & re-adding the
Style box to the QAT, no change.

Help??

MT

 

[Stefan Blom]

FWIW, I have seen this as well. As far as I know, there is no fix or
workaround available. :-(

 

[Mark Tangard]

Well, that's pretty upsetting.

I can't imagine all the style-using folks I used to know here in pre-2007 days
have just shrugged this off. Is there a new recommended way to manage text
formatting in 2007 that I don't know about? Is our only option to downgrade
this machine back to 2003? It's not very usable this way.

Just realized I didn't try a Detect/Repair; will do that & post back.

Mark

 

[Graham Mayor]

Fortunately I have not seen that particular problem, but does
CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S work? If so you can add that dialog to the QAT it is called
Styles ... From that dialog you can set the display options.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP


<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Stefan Blom]

There is a discussion in the private newsgroup about this issue, but it has
been a while, so I don't know if it is still accessible. I posted the
initial question in that thread, as soon as I noticed the issue (since then
I have seen it on another Word installation as well).

Someone else confirmed the behavior, but I don't remember who it was. Beth
Melton? Cindy Meister?

As far as I can remember, no one was able to describe the circumstances that
caused the problem, and a few suggested workarounds such as creating a new
user profile didn't help.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

I saw this problem once... and deleting Normal.dotm (and letting Word create
a new one) fixed it.

 

[Mark Tangard]

Hi people. Graham's suggestion worked. Actually you don't even need the ALT,
which of course now reminds me that the pre-2007 shortcut to get to the Style
box was always CTRL+SHIFT+S, so obviously I should've tried that first, duh.
I'll try Herb's also (should've thought of that too) if it happens again --
awkward though, since there's code in some of my users' Normal templates. The
floating Apply Style window that comes up with CTRL+SHIFT+S actually seems
slightly more legible than the one you get when you add 'Style' to the QAT
(illusion?), so we may stick with that.

(On a tangent there, as a group my team is pretty ticked off at how it seems
impossible to adjust the font size of ribbon items throughout Office 2007, to
make them more legible to folks who aren't 20. Anybody else climbing the walls
over that? I & many of my crew already wear eyeglasses...)

Thanks all,
MT

I saw this problem once... and deleting Normal.dotm (and letting Word
create a new one) fixed it.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

There is a discussion in the private newsgroup about this issue, but it has
been a while, so I don't know if it is still accessible. I posted the
initial question in that thread, as soon as I noticed the issue (since then
I have seen it on another Word installation as well).

Someone else confirmed the behavior, but I don't remember who it was. Beth Melton? Cindy Meister?

As far as I can remember, no one was able to describe the circumstances that

caused the problem, and a few suggested workarounds such as creating a new user
profile didn't help.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Deleting normal.dotm did not work for me.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

I saw this problem once... and deleting Normal.dotm (and letting Word
create a new one) fixed it.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

So... you have this problem at present? I assume you've been through "the
usual suspects" such as deleting the Data key or even renaming the Word
branch that contains the Data key.

What about deleting/renaming word.qat? Mine is here:

C:\Users\Herb\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Stefan Blom]

I've had it on my home computer since I first reported it in the private
newsgroup. And, no, the usual suspects were found not guilty. :-(

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

The other possibility that occurs to me is that it might be a resource
problem (in years past, failure of lists to populate were often related to
resources). This can range from low memory to other programs squashing the
area of memory being used. A misbehaving display driver can cause such
problems, too. As a first check on that, I would try reducing the resolution
to see if that "fixes" it. You might also try changing the settings for the
shortcut that starts Word (assuming this is in Vista). Look at the
Compatibility tab and see if a different setting affects it.

It if used to work fine, but has stopped working, it's possible that a
Windows or Office update killed it by replacing one of the underlying
rendering dll files. If you have a general idea of when it stopped working
correctly, take a look at your update and installation history/dates to see
if there's something you installed the preceded its stopping working.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[PamC via OfficeKB.com]

Stefan,

You might also try putting it in an add-on template QAT.

PamC

I've had it on my home computer since I first reported it in the private
newsgroup. And, no, the usual suspects were found not guilty. :-(

So... you have this problem at present? I assume you've been through "the
usual suspects" such as deleting the Data key or even renaming the Word

[quoted text clipped - 65 lines]

 

[Stefan Blom]

The error is with the Style box no matter where it is located.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Stefan,

You might also try putting it in an add-on template QAT.

PamC

I've had it on my home computer since I first reported it in the private
newsgroup. And, no, the usual suspects were found not guilty. :-(

So... you have this problem at present? I assume you've been through
"the
usual suspects" such as deleting the Data key or even renaming the Word

[quoted text clipped - 65 lines]

MT

 

[Stefan Blom]

Actually, I spent most of the weekend experimenting with this on my home
computer, and I found that loggin in as Administrator and deleting my entire
user profile fixed the problem. When restarting Word, the Style box worked
fine again. Of course, it would be helpful to know what exactly is causing
the issue. In my current situation, I don't know when/if it will happen
again. :-( The problem usually starts with the table style entries, some of
which get blank, and then it affects the other styles listed, resulting in a
drop-down of blank entries. You can still apply styles, but you cannot tell
which style you are applying.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

 

[Stefan Blom]

The other possibility that occurs to me is that it might be a resource
problem (in years past, failure of lists to populate were often related to
resources). This can range from low memory to other programs squashing the
area of memory being used. A misbehaving display driver can cause such
problems, too. As a first check on that, I would try reducing the resolution
to see if that "fixes" it. You might also try changing the settings for the
shortcut that starts Word (assuming this is in Vista). Look at the
Compatibility tab and see if a different setting affects it.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll look into this as soon as I get the time.
But if the problem is related to memory or to the display driver, how come it
affects only the Style box? One would think it should happen to, say, the
Font dropdown as well?

It if used to work fine, but has stopped working, it's possible that a
Windows or Office update killed it by replacing one of the underlying
rendering dll files. If you have a general idea of when it stopped working
correctly, take a look at your update and installation history/dates to see
if there's something you installed the preceded its stopping working.

The problem occurred as soon as I installed Office 2007.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

You've now said elsewhere that creating a new user profile "solves" the
problem. Since it never worked correctly (I had thought that it worked okay
at first and later stopped working), my guess would be that there was a
glitch during setup when Office created user-specific settings, rather than
this being a resource problem.

As to why a resource problem would have a narrow impact... I don't know,
except to say that back when the problem occurred frequently... it was
pretty selective about where it happened, so I presumed that "resource
problem" was a euphemism for "coding error that affects specific features".
But, this is moot if the problem was solved with a new user profile. This
says that it was some kind of setup problem. It might be in the user file
structure, or it might be in the registry. Having "solved" a variety of
problem in the same way, and having tried to "copy" the solution to a
problem user profile, I've never been able to do that by copying files or
registry entries from a "good" user to a "bad" user.

Word works in mysterious ways.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Stefan Blom]

You've now said elsewhere that creating a new user profile "solves" the
problem. Since it never worked correctly (I had thought that it worked
okay at first and later stopped working), my guess would be that there was
a glitch during setup when Office created user-specific settings, rather
than this being a resource problem.

As to why a resource problem would have a narrow impact... I don't know,
except to say that back when the problem occurred frequently... it was
pretty selective about where it happened, so I presumed that "resource
problem" was a euphemism for "coding error that affects specific
features". But, this is moot if the problem was solved with a new user
profile. This says that it was some kind of setup problem. It might be in
the user file structure, or it might be in the registry. Having "solved" a
variety of problem in the same way, and having tried to "copy" the
solution to a problem user profile, I've never been able to do that by
copying files or registry entries from a "good" user to a "bad" user.

Word works in mysterious ways.

In other words, you never know what to expect... <g>

Actually, yesterday afternoon I realized that some of the table styles are
back to showing as blank entries in the Style drop down. <sigh> I guess I
will have to continue looking at this, when I can find the time for it.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Interesting... I see that I have 7 blank table styles between Comment Text
and Date. They're all the ones whose names begin "Dark List". I've never
notice them before... I've never used these particular styles (too ugly).
So, I don't know if they've been missing all along. They're also blank on my
laptop.

I wonder if this is a function of the styles themselves... perhaps they use
white text, and that's why they appear blank.

 

[Stefan Blom]

I have noticed those styles too, as I wrote in another message. I have
assumed that they are a first step towards a Style drop down filled with
blank entries, but since they do seem to make use of white text, maybe your
guess is correct.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP