Style Listings in Word 2004

[Rudy Kohut]

Can anyone tell me why the Formatting Palette does not show all the styles
that one has to work with if using the "Format/Styles..." command?

For example, I am using the "Caption" style but it refuses to show up as
available on the Formatting Palette even when I choose "List all styles"
from the drop down menu on the styles part of the Palette.

What can I do to rectify this? Seems odd not to be able to access styles one
is actually using in a document from the Formatting Palette.

Using Word 2004 V11.1.

Thanks

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Rudy:

Really good question, mate

The answer is something like this:

When removing the silliness from the Word 2003 User Interface, which Mac
Word inherited, they did not have the time, money, or room to do everything.

In Word 2003, there is another sub-dialog that enables you to customise the
list of styles in the task pane. Most of the Task Pane did not get exposed
to the user interface in Word 2003.

The whole Task Pane construction is a work in progress, and I guess the PC
mob ran out of time.

Because the PC people did not expose the dialog internally, there's nothing
for the Mac people to get hold of. They would have had to create their own
dialog.

Given that the mechanism does not work properly on the PC (it won't hold the
settings you make) I suppose the Mac BU decided they had more important
things to do than chase the dialog.

There's not a lot of room on the Formatting Palette. Mac BU have improved
it substantially over the Word 2003 alternative: it's much more powerful,
more customisable, and contains much less silliness. It's far more of a
professional tool.

So instead of wasting time and development money building in access to
something that doesn't work properly anyway, I guess they chose to predefine
a list of the most useful styles and hard-code that.

They must have got it close to perfect, because until you asked the
question, I had not even noticed that the Caption style is missing. I
normally use the Insert>Caption command, which applies it automatically.

So there you have it: what we have is better (more useful and more stable)
than the original. But there are some bits missing.

Hope this helps

Can anyone tell me why the Formatting Palette does not show all the styles
that one has to work with if using the "Format/Styles..." command?

For example, I am using the "Caption" style but it refuses to show up as
available on the Formatting Palette even when I choose "List all styles"
from the drop down menu on the styles part of the Palette.

What can I do to rectify this? Seems odd not to be able to access styles one
is actually using in a document from the Formatting Palette.

Using Word 2004 V11.1.

Thanks

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

"All styles" in Formatting Palette misses really a lot of styles, John,
including, for example, all the TOC styles. There are 127 styles in the
Formatting Palette's so-called "All styles" vs. 163 built-in styles in
Format/StyleŠ/List. (127 is suspiciously convenient as 2^7 less 1. Usually
there will be one bit used as some sort of identifier, or reserved for
positive/negative sign. Basically one byte - 2^8 bits - has been set aside
for this list and the rest miss the cut.)

The thing is that they should not call it "All styles" ‹ they should call it
"More styles". To get All styles you need to go to Format/StyleŠ/List.
Unless they are able to include the full list in the Formatting Pane, "All
styles" is incorrect and misleading: they should change it to "More styles":
a simple correction to make. That would be honest and remove the confusion
surrounding this list.

Once they're at it they should also re-name "Available styles" to "Basic
styles" or something like that, since all the styles in the more inclusive
setting are also easily available by switching the popup. "Available styles"
seems to have 5 basic styles - Clear formatting, Headings 1, 2, 3, and
Normal - plus whatever else you've used in the document already or added to
the template on which it's based. I also sometimes seem to find more than 3
Headings there - all the way up to 9 - though when or why I know not.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
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[John McGhie]

I couldn't agree more. I think one of us should make their lives a misery
at MacBU with this information

"All styles" in Formatting Palette misses really a lot of styles, John,
including, for example, all the TOC styles. There are 127 styles in the
Formatting Palette's so-called "All styles" vs. 163 built-in styles in
Format/StyleŠ/List. (127 is suspiciously convenient as 2^7 less 1. Usually
there will be one bit used as some sort of identifier, or reserved for
positive/negative sign. Basically one byte - 2^8 bits - has been set aside
for this list and the rest miss the cut.)

The thing is that they should not call it "All styles" ‹ they should call it
"More styles". To get All styles you need to go to Format/StyleŠ/List.
Unless they are able to include the full list in the Formatting Pane, "All
styles" is incorrect and misleading: they should change it to "More styles":
a simple correction to make. That would be honest and remove the confusion
surrounding this list.

Once they're at it they should also re-name "Available styles" to "Basic
styles" or something like that, since all the styles in the more inclusive
setting are also easily available by switching the popup. "Available styles"
seems to have 5 basic styles - Clear formatting, Headings 1, 2, 3, and
Normal - plus whatever else you've used in the document already or added to
the template on which it's based. I also sometimes seem to find more than 3
Headings there - all the way up to 9 - though when or why I know not.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Rob Daly [MSFT]]

Paul is correct in his assertion that "All Styles" as offered in the
formatting palette style UI does not offer every single built-in style in
Word. Also, he is correct in pointing out that you can get to every single
style (including the ones that word uses for internal functionality such as
caption) through the Format | Style dialog.

Another thing that may help is to show the Formatting toolbar (View |
Toolbars | Formatting). On the left-hand side of that toolbar, there is a
text edit dropdown for styles. If you want to quickly change the style of a
selection to something that does not appear on the formatting palette, then
just type the style name in there and press enter. You can type "caption",
"TOC1", etc etc in there and it will work (as long as the style name you
type is valid).

Hope this helps,

Rob.


--
Rob Daly
Macintosh Business Unit
Word Test

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