Style probs: not answered by FAQs

[triley]

I've been reading up on these style issues in the FAQ pages, and am
still
having trouble doing some very basic things: switching between body
text and
indented text (or blockquote) for example. I have gone through several
times
and made sure that all styles, especially Normal, have UNCHECKED boxes
by the
"Automatically" update option in the organizer.

My hunch is that this has something to do with how how paragraphs are
joining
together invisibly somehow, there must be something simple I'm missing.
It's
very tricky to get a SINGLE paragraph to simple indent the way I want
it to
using Styles. One thing I've noticed is how the cursor in 2004 can now
site
on the RIGHT side of the paragraph mark, as well as the left. But in
some
older documents I've sucked into 2004, the old styles work fine until I
start
putting new paragraphs in, and then the styles don't seem to function
well at
all. This has me thinking it's something about the WORD 2004 edition
that's
handling paragraphs differently.

At other times, I'll close down word by hitting Ctl-Q, and get an error
message telling me that Word "has unexpectedly quit..." Finally, Word
2004
still seems to have trouble with the title field when I go to give a
document
its name. It much prefers pasting in a name than my typing it in, and
even
then, won't register the name until I hit Enter and it saves it.

Just tried a complete uninstall followed by a fresh reinstall AFTER
running Disk Utility to repair all permissions, same problem
persists...

Thanks in advance, Tim

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Tim--request for more detail--

I've been reading up on these style issues in the FAQ pages,

Can you say which FAQ pages you have been reading? With links? Just so we
know.

and am still
having trouble doing some very basic things: switching between body text and
indented text (or blockquote) for example. I have gone through several times
and made sure that all styles, especially Normal, have UNCHECKED boxes by the
"Automatically" update option in the organizer.

You don't uncheck the "automatically update" box for a style in the
Organizer, but in the Format | Style, Modify dialog. What were you doing
with the Organizer, which doesn't have an automatically update box? Or do
you perhaps mean in Tools | Templates and Add-ins, which does have an
automatically update box but probably not the one you wanted to uncheck.

My hunch is that this has something to do with how how paragraphs are joining
together invisibly somehow, there must be something simple I'm missing.

If you click ¶ on the standard toolbar to turn on nonprinting characters,
are all the paragraphs ending with a paragraph mark (gray ¶)?

It's
very tricky to get a SINGLE paragraph to simple indent the way I want it to
using Styles.

Can you state specifically what you do that doesn't work?

One thing I've noticed is how the cursor in 2004 can now site on
the RIGHT side of the paragraph mark, as well as the left.
But in some older
documents I've sucked into 2004, the old styles work fine until I start
putting new paragraphs in, and then the styles don't seem to function well at
all. This has me thinking it's something about the WORD 2004 edition that's
handling paragraphs differently.

What do you mean by "don't function"? They don't stick, you can't apply
them, you apply them but nothing changes.....?
Are there a lot of empty paragraphs (nonprinting ¶ on a line by itself) in
your documents?

At other times, I'll close down word by hitting Ctl-Q, and get an error
message telling me that Word "has unexpectedly quit..."
Finally, Word 2004
still seems to have trouble with the title field when I go to give a document
its name. It much prefers pasting in a name than my typing it in, and even
then, won't register the name until I hit Enter and it saves it.

Word trouble with the title field in the Save As dialog kinda sounds like a
display issue to me--what are the specs (os, memory, processor) on your
computer?

Just tried a complete uninstall followed by a fresh reinstall AFTER running
Disk Utility to repair all permissions, same problem persists...

Exactly which problems persist? Did the reinstall help the unexpectedly quit
or the title field problem at all (or did it seem to, assuming they were
intermittent in the first place)?

 

[triley]

--"Can you say which FAQ pages you have been reading? With links? Just
so we know."

http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm

This seems to be the most relevant FAQ page devoted to the prob I'm
having...

--"You don't uncheck the "automatically update" box for a style in the
Organizer, but in the Format | Style, Modify dialog. What were you
doing
with the Organizer, which doesn't have an automatically update box? Or
do
you perhaps mean in Tools | Templates and Add-ins, which does have an
automatically update box but probably not the one you wanted to
uncheck."

You're right, I meant Format Style, Modify dialog...

--"If you click ¶ on the standard toolbar to turn on nonprinting
characters,
are all the paragraphs ending with a paragraph mark (gray ¶)?"

YES, they are

--"Can you state specifically what you do that doesn't work?"

OK, I have a very simple indented style called "blockquote," and I want
to revert to "typewriter single" [name indicates font + spacing
characteristics] for a single paragraph between two "blockquote"
paragraphs. When I select text from a graph and select the "typewriter
single" Style, it formats both the selected text AND THE PREVIOUS THREE
LINES FROM THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH, even though I see THREE paragraph
marks at the ends of those lines. It's as if they are joined invisibly
somehow, and don't want to break out of "blockquote" format...

--"What do you mean by "don't function"? They don't stick, you can't
apply
them, you apply them but nothing changes.....?
Are there a lot of empty paragraphs (nonprinting ¶ on a line by
itself) in
your documents?"

Can't reapply "blockquote" style to these three lines with paragraph
marks; YES, one empty graph between these three lines and new selected
graph. Does the same thing when I eliminate this EMPTY graph...

--"Word trouble with the title field in the Save As dialog kinda sounds
like a
display issue to me--what are the specs (os, memory, processor) on your
computer?"

OSX 10.3.8, PB G4 1GHz, 1 MB L3 cache. Both Word 2000 and 2004 have
this prob for me. I've switched over briefly to Pages and Nisus, but
prefer Word's keyboard shortcuts for cursor movement, gets me around
documents far more swiftly than anything else I can find.

--"Exactly which problems persist? Did the reinstall help the
unexpectedly quit
or the title field problem at all (or did it seem to, assuming they
were
intermittent in the first place)?"

Actually, reinstall seems to have helped with the field problem, enters
text better, if not perfectly, now. Also, the quit error message hasn't
reappeared yet. Just for kicks I tried a test document, wrote a few
words on a line, hit the return a few times to give me some empty
paragraphs, and tried reformatting ONE of those paragraphs in a new
Style, and it repeats error from above: wants to format ALL graphs in
the same style... These graphs are getting LINKED somehow backstage and
there's got to be a fix which UNHITCHES graphs from one another...

Thanks SO MUCH for reading down this far! TIm

 

[Bill Weylock]

[sidebar] You¹re saying ³graphs² as shorthand for paragraphs? Suggest you
abandon that (knowing how attractive shortcuts are since we¹re talking about
Office, which has graphing components. Confused me for the first 2/3 of your
last post.

Suggest you send me or Daiya the document you¹re having trouble with.
Something is almost surely wonky with the way you have paragraphing
implemented and/or with the way your styles relate to one another.

When you say the three lines from the preceding paragraph have paragraph
marks at the end of them, you are indicating some possible confusion about
what constitutes a line and a paragraph. If there is a paragraph mark at the
end of a line, it¹s a paragraph. OR, sometimes ³line feeds² display as
paragraph symbols but do not behave in exactly the same way. I could get
shot down on that, but it was certainly true in previous versions of Word.

Wild guess: you imported this text from TextEdit perhaps or another text
editor? I¹ve seen one case when such text looked like separate paragraphs
but was actually one paragraph.

Does anything here ring a bell? Hope this helps a bit.


Best,


- Bill

--"Can you say which FAQ pages you have been reading? With links? Just
so we know."

http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm

This seems to be the most relevant FAQ page devoted to the prob I'm
having...

--"You don't uncheck the "automatically update" box for a style in the
Organizer, but in the Format | Style, Modify dialog. What were you
doing
with the Organizer, which doesn't have an automatically update box? Or
do
you perhaps mean in Tools | Templates and Add-ins, which does have an
automatically update box but probably not the one you wanted to
uncheck."

You're right, I meant Format Style, Modify dialog...

--"If you click ¶ on the standard toolbar to turn on nonprinting
characters,
are all the paragraphs ending with a paragraph mark (gray ¶)?"

YES, they are

--"Can you state specifically what you do that doesn't work?"

OK, I have a very simple indented style called "blockquote," and I want
to revert to "typewriter single" [name indicates font + spacing
characteristics] for a single paragraph between two "blockquote"
paragraphs. When I select text from a graph and select the "typewriter
single" Style, it formats both the selected text AND THE PREVIOUS THREE
LINES FROM THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH, even though I see THREE paragraph
marks at the ends of those lines. It's as if they are joined invisibly
somehow, and don't want to break out of "blockquote" format...

--"What do you mean by "don't function"? They don't stick, you can't
apply
them, you apply them but nothing changes.....?
Are there a lot of empty paragraphs (nonprinting ¶ on a line by
itself) in
your documents?"

Can't reapply "blockquote" style to these three lines with paragraph
marks; YES, one empty graph between these three lines and new selected
graph. Does the same thing when I eliminate this EMPTY graph...

--"Word trouble with the title field in the Save As dialog kinda sounds
like a
display issue to me--what are the specs (os, memory, processor) on your
computer?"

OSX 10.3.8, PB G4 1GHz, 1 MB L3 cache. Both Word 2000 and 2004 have
this prob for me. I've switched over briefly to Pages and Nisus, but
prefer Word's keyboard shortcuts for cursor movement, gets me around
documents far more swiftly than anything else I can find.

--"Exactly which problems persist? Did the reinstall help the
unexpectedly quit
or the title field problem at all (or did it seem to, assuming they
were
intermittent in the first place)?"

Actually, reinstall seems to have helped with the field problem, enters
text better, if not perfectly, now. Also, the quit error message hasn't
reappeared yet. Just for kicks I tried a test document, wrote a few
words on a line, hit the return a few times to give me some empty
paragraphs, and tried reformatting ONE of those paragraphs in a new
Style, and it repeats error from above: wants to format ALL graphs in
the same style... These graphs are getting LINKED somehow backstage and
there's got to be a fix which UNHITCHES graphs from one another...

Thanks SO MUCH for reading down this far! TIm

Panther 10.3.6
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003

 

[triley]

YES, "graphs" is my journalist shorthand for PARAGRAPHS, sorry for the
confusion. Happy to send you a copy of this document, which was NOT
imported from another text editor. Behaves this way even by simply
opening a New Document in Word...let me know next steps... Tim

 

[Beth Rosengard]

If this occurs with a new document, it suggests there's something wrong with
your Normal template (unless you're using a custom template?). I recommend
that you rename your Normal template (with Word quit) and allow Word to
create a new one when you relaunch it. For more on the Normal template, see
here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/MacWordNormal.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another browser
for this site.)

Any help?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Totally confused me. I was just developing a theory about pasting in graphs
from other programs causing strange behavior.

Myself, I use para as shorthand, which is handy in that Word also uses that
abbreviation (ResetPara, e.g.)

Let us know if Beth's trick works.

 

[triley]

Are we having fun yet?

Still no luck: quit Word, went to ~/Documents/Microsoft User
Data/Normal and changed the file to OLDNormal. Reopened word by
clicking on my "test" file on my desktop, same probs. Opened a New
file, hit Return a dozen times. Document is blank: Style is "Normal,"
as indicated on upper left-hand window open 1/2 inch for Style Area
Width. Every time I press Return, I get a new paragraph mark with no
new style in Style Area Width. Every time I change the style for any
single paragraph, it changes for ALL paragraphs.

PS: Even in this "new" Normal template, the old "Test" document seems
to pick up my previous Styles, ie, "typewriter single" and "blockquote"
from above, even though I did not go in and create these Styles anew.
Does this mean it's still grabbing the old Normal template?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Oh, yeah, lots of fun. We hang out answering questions for the chance of a
fun one coming along.

It continues to change in the new doc you created after the new normal? The
pre-existing test doc is going to retain the problems, creating a new Normal
won't affect existing documents.

If the problem does persist in the freshly created blank doc from the fresh
Normal, feel free to send it--google totally obscures my address, but here

daiya at-symbol mvps dot org

Re your PS. Text carries styles with it, unless you specifically wipe the
styles when you cut and paste. All documents are based on the Normal
template unless you specifically create a new doc based on a different
template.

Every time I press Return, I get a new paragraph mark with no
new style in Style Area Width.

That is *exceedingly* weird. When you hit return, showing nonprinting
characters, you get a gray ¶, right? Not a bent arrow?

DM

 

[triley]

RIGHT. When I hit Return, showing nonprinting characters, I get gray
paragraph marks, not bent arrows (soft returns). Tim

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

RIGHT. When I hit Return, showing nonprinting characters, I get gray

paragraph marks, not bent arrows (soft returns). Tim

And indeed they are.

Okay, Most Important Question: just to confirm, this happens even in
documents created *after* you created a new Normal? The document you sent
me was created fresh *after* you quit, named OLDNormal, and restarted?

Daiya

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

RIGHT. When I hit Return, showing nonprinting characters, I get gray

paragraph marks, not bent arrows (soft returns). Tim

And indeed they are. And just to confirm, this happens even in documents
created *after* you created a new Normal? The document you sent me was
created fresh *after* you quit, named OLDNormal, and restarted?

If the answer is No, then see if it happens in documents based on a fresh
Normal. If the answer is Yes, it happens in documents based on a completely
fresh Normal, then read on.
(not to insult your intelligence with all the double-checking, it's just
wise to be a tad anal when trying to troubleshoot by usenet)

You asked me offline:

Here's the doc, but I'm curious: won't it show up differently in your system
since you have a different Normal template?

No. Not unless the "automatically update" is checked in the Tools |
Templates and Add-ins dialog, and the style names were the same. Your doc
brought its styles with it. Once a document is created, its link to Normal
is broken--changes to Normal should no longer affect it.

Okay, everybody, this is exceedingly weird. Same thing as Tim saw happens on
my system. The Style Area shows nothing, even though it's really a paragraph
mark. Changing the style changes the whole thing. Automatically update is
not checked anywhere. The paragraphs are indeed linked together.

HOWEVER, when I hit enter on my computer, I get a real paragraph. The link
is broken and the style shows in the Style Area.

So what we have are a whole bunch of corrupt paragraph marks--and for some
reason Word 2004 on Tim's computer is creating corrupt paragraph marks.

Save as Web Page and back did not change anything. OH, WAIT, I did it wrong.
Save as Web Page and back worked great, once I saw the directions that say
*close the document*, and then figured out to right-click and Open With
Word. All the corrupt para marks just vanished into the ether.

The procedure is spelled out here:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DocumentCorruption.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

Okay, that's how to fix a problematic doc. Now how to stop Tim's computer
from creating them? But that's not worth thinking about until we have
specific confirmation that it wasn't a corrupt Normal template.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Inline.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 5 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

Totally confused me. I was just developing a theory about pasting in graphs
from other programs causing strange behavior.

Myself, I use para as shorthand, which is handy in that Word also uses that
abbreviation (ResetPara, e.g.)

I do too, Daiya, and one day I decided to make an entry in Tools >
AutoCorrect, namely para is corrected to paragraph and paras is corrected to
paragraphs. You'd be amazed by the idiosyncratic crud in my AutoCorrect! --
even name changes ;-)

 

[triley]

YES, this is a new doc created AFTER shutdown and creating a new Normal
template. Just for kicks I tried it again to make sure. So GLAD
somebody can now understand what I'm talking about! I'll try saving as
Web doc next... Tim

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

YES, this is a new doc created AFTER shutdown and creating a new Normal
template. Just for kicks I tried it again to make sure. So GLAD
somebody can now understand what I'm talking about! I'll try saving as
Web doc next... Tim

After Save as Web Page and back, does your return key still create corrupt
paragraph marks?

Do you have any add-ins installed for Word?
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Add-Ins.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

Daiya

 

[triley]

After Save as Web Page, Close, reopen in Word, it turns existing
Paragraphs into Normal style, but all NEW paragraphs created have same
old problem: no style attached, linked to previous paragraph. I don't
believe I have any add-ins, I use a couple universal programs but doubt
they would be affecting this: TypeitForMe, a standalone auto-replace
program; Quicksilver, a Finder app that sits in the dock. I rarely use
macros and can't even think of any that might be in there now.

What would happen if I got a "clean" Normal template from you to
replace mine... or have we moved beyond the template theory...?

 

[triley]

PS: I can't get to this page using either Camino or MS Explorer:

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Add-Ins.

 

[triley]

PS PS: A couple more WEIRD things.... I can't seem to get my Word
document to incorporate a SOFT Return [SHIFT-Return to produce a "bent
arrow"], but I CAN get the Paragraphs to UNLINK by hitting
CTRL-OPT-RETURN...!!!

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Because it lost the .htm somehow. The link I gave works for me.
DM

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Wow, interesting.

Okay, go into Tools | Customize, Customize Keyboard.

Enter Cntl-opt-return as a proposed shortcut (for anything)--but DON'T
assign it. Just propose it, and you will get a message saying
"cntl-opt-return is already assigned to..."

What is it assigned to? (then delete it, so that you don't re-assign it)

Since your return key enters things that act like line breaks, I'm not
surprised the line break keys are messed up. (line break: Word's term for
soft returns)

PS PS: A couple more WEIRD things.... I can't seem to get my Word
document to incorporate a SOFT Return [SHIFT-Return to produce a "bent
arrow"], but I CAN get the Paragraphs to UNLINK by hitting
CTRL-OPT-RETURN...!!!