styles, formatting

[yepp]

This is probably an easy question. When I format a doc using templates,
styles, etc. and send that finished document to the customer, do the styles
maintain integrity? Shouldn't the styles look the same to the customer?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This is a loaded question, but the answer is yes provided that:

1. You're using a template other than Normal.dot (sounds like you are).

2. The customer does not have a template with the same name or, if the
customer does have a template with the same name, you have not set your
template to "Automatically update document styles." (There is no good reason
to have "Automatically update" enabled, anyway, so this would be a really
long shot.)

3. The customer has the required fonts installed. This will be a safe bet if
you stick to common fonts such as the Windows core fonts (Times New Roman,
Arial, Courier New, Symbol, Wingdings, etc.) or, assuming that the customer
has Word and not just the Word reader, fonts that ship with Word (if you're
unsure of the latter, see
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.asp).

What *won't* necessarily look the same (and you have little control over
this) is the layout and display.

1. If the customer has a different printer driver set as the default, line
and page breaks may be different (see
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm).

2. Although you can control what view the document opens in (Normal, Print
Layout) and the initial Zoom ratio, since these are saved with the document
(sort of--I see a lot of inconsistency in this in Word 2002), you cannot
control whether the customer has nonprinting characters (formatting marks)
or text boundaries displayed or, even more radically, if the customer has
enabled "Blue background, white text," "Draft font," or "Wrap to window."
Even if the document may print out the same for the customer as for you,
what he sees on the screen may not be the same as what you see. This is not
usually an issue, since he sees the document the way he is used to seeing
documents; anything else would be disconcerting.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word

 

[yepp]

Thanks! The customer commented that some of the words were in BOLD face
font and I checked the copy sent to him and checked the styles, rechecked
and I don't know why he would be seeing BOLD faced fonts scattered
throughout the document. Oh well.

Hi yepp

If you send your finished document to someone else, then your styles will

stay intact in your document ... unless you tick the box

at Tools > Templates and Add-ins > Automatically update document styles.

If you tick that box, and if the recipient has a template

with the same name as the template on which your document was based, then

the recipient's template's styles will be copied into your

document.

So to preserve your styles, don't tick that box.

For more info on that, see http://groups.google.com/groups?&threadm=#[email protected]
hx.gbl&rnum=1

However, if you're concerned about copying text from one document to

another, then it's a different story. See