Styles and templates

[gwh]

Hi everyone,

I need to create a whole heap of styles in a word document. I want to
use the style name body text but Word won't let me use it because it's
reserved. I need the document to be a template so I thought maybe if I
got rid of all the current styles in the document I'm using, then I'd
be able to use the style names I want. Can someone tell me how I get
rid of the default styles and how I create a template?

Would appreciate any help offered.

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi there,
there are a couple of styles which cannot be deleted, such as Normal or
Heading. Maybe there are workarounds for deleting them, but generally
speaking, you can't delete them from the Format>Style menu. However, you may
not even have to delete them. You're mentioning that you want to use the
Body Text style, but Word won't let you create a new style named like this.
Of course this is not possible, as you cannot have two (in this case,
paragraph) styles with identical names. So why not change Word's Body Text
style to match your needs? In the Format>Style menu, scroll up until you can
see the Body Text style, select it and then modify it until it looks the way
you want it to.

For general information on styles, have a look at MVP Shauna Kelly's
website, which you can find here: <http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/>. For
precise info on modifying styles, this page should be interesting:
<http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ModifyAStyle.html>. This website was
created for Windows users, but most of the stuff also applies to Mac
versions of Word. You should also be able to find some information on
templates while you're there, so read everything carefully.

Generally speaking though, once you have modified the different styles (or
created new ones), simply go to File>Save As, and select Document Template
from the Format dropdown menu. Be careful when you open that file, though,
since the Mac version of Word opens a template file as such when you
double-click it in the Finder. To create a new document based on that
template, you'd best put the template into the templates folder
(Applications/Microsoft Office (X or 2004, you didn't say which version
you're using)/Templates/My Templates) and open the file through the Project
Gallery.

If anything of what I've just written is unclear, please post back. Hope
this was helpful.

Michel

 

[gwh]

Thanks so much for all that helpful information - I think I understand
now!