Style lists in the Styles and Formatting task pane

[Adrian]

Hi,

I've spent half an hour trying to work out how the dropdown list entries
work at the bottom of the Styles and Formatting task pane and I give up. I
checked the help file but it really didn't help. The entries on the list are
as follows:

-Available Formatting
-Formatting in Use
-Available Styles
-All Styles
-Custom

When you click Custom, the "Format Settings" dialog box appears. This dialog
box seems to let you do the following:
1. Define the styles that you want to appear on the Available Styles list
(from a list of all styles, you select the check box next to each one you
want to be shown on the Available Styles list).
2. Define the styles that you want to appear on the All Styles list (from a
list of all styles, you select the check box next to each one you want to be
shown on the All Styles list). (I find this somewhat bizarre.)
3. Choose what styles you want to show in the Styles and Formatting pane
(with Custom showing as the selected list). Note that if you change to
another list, you cannot get the original list back directly; instead, the
""Format Settings" dialog box appears. When creating a custom list you start
off by selecting one of the following selections:
-Available styles
-Styles in use
-All styles
-User-defined styles
-Do not show styles

(If you choose Available styles or All styles you are effectively changing
the associated lists at the same time as described in 1 and 2.)

Is my understanding correct? If so, this functionality really could do with
a usability review! If not, please enlighten me!

Also, I don't understand why anyone would click Custom and then choose "Do
not show styles"...

....and while "User-defined styles" and "Styles in use" are pretty clear, I
have a question related to the latter: I have read various articles that
claim "Styles in use" is not well named as it also shows styles that have
been applied to a doc and later removed. Is this still what happens in Word
2003?.


Thanks,

Adrian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

To the extent that anyone understands this, I think you'll find that
understanding detailed in
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/sfpane/StylesAndFormattingPane.html

 

[Adrian]

Thanks for the link Suzanne. However, my questions are really about how the
"Format Settings" dialog box controls the lists in the Styles and Formatting
task pane and this is not really covered. This is all the FAQ says:

"Choose which styles you would like to see listed (in the Show box, choose
Custom. In the Category box, choose All Styles. Now, tick and un-tick the
list in the Styles to be Visible box. If you want to save this setting for
all documents based on this document's template, click the Save settings in
Template box. Click OK)"

Cheers,

Adrian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It's possible even Shauna doesn't know how this works, then (or thought it
was too complex for users at the level she's targeting). I confess that my
limited experiments have just resulted in confusion and frustration. I'm
especially confused about why these settings seem to have been customized in
Normal.dot, where I make it a cardinal rule never to change any styles or
other settings. <sigh>

 

[Adrian]

To me, it looks like when the Styles and Formatting task pane was created,
the developers took the opportunity to tuck some buggy/poorly designed style
functionality out of the way!

Adrian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If it's any consolation to you, this has been intensively rethought for Word
2007.