Good morning Captain; stand easy,
You could make a macro, I suppose -- basing on "no style" is a VBA property
of <BaseStyle ""> (without the < >).
The document should not look different when opened by another person unless
they have checked the checkbox "Automatically update styles on open" in
Tools menu -> Templates and Add-ins. If the recipient activates this setting
for the document (the "Automatically update" option is a property of the
document, not the template -- in other words, you can't set Normal.dot to
update styles automatically), each time they open your document Word will
search for an attached template and, if one isn't found, will attach it to
their Normal template. That's when styles in your document will take on the
characteristics they have defined or (more likely) the Word's default style
definitions.
[One word of warning about the previous paragraph: this phenomenon does not
happen very often, and I have not been able to reliably test the settings on
far-away computers where this has happened to my documents (only on about 3
occasions). So the above is a digest of comments on Word MVP newsgroups,
especially microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs. There may be more to
this that I don't yet know about.]
I make sure that text in the body of my documents doesn't get changed by
creating my own styles, with the root style based on "no style". So instead
of Body Text style I have a custom style "bt", and so on.
Logically one would also do this for headings too, and although I have
devised non-default headings I no longer use them, because they confuse
other people with whom I share documents (and there are too many useful
bells and whistles in the default heading styles that can't all be
replicated). My main focus anyway is on conserving e.g. the size of text in
tables and the leading applied to paragraphs; the headings aren't absolutely
essential (I'd do a PDF if they were that important).
(I attach a small toolbar to the documents I send to colleagues, containing
buttons for the styles I've used in the document -- they find it much more
convenient and it guides their allocation of styles when they work on the
document, even if their knowledge of styles is very limited.)
If you would like more information on these styles and their use, I discuss
various aspects of this topic under these headings in the notes on the way I
use Word, called "Bend Word to your Will", downloadable from
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/Bend/BendWord.htm
(a new, January 2004, version has been posted in the past few days, much
updated from the May 2003 edition; but don't download the template yet --
there is a minor glitch; check in a few weeks' time). Some of the relevant
notes are under these headings:
"Stopping other people¹s styles over-riding yours when they receive your
document"
In appendix A, which covers the main "minimum maintenance" features of my
documents: "To minimise problems on other people¹s computers (Mac or PC)"
Some info is in appendix C, which is titled "My specifications for styles to
minimise the likelihood of changed appearance on other computers"
(You'll find it best if you first read the intro at the start of "Bend Word
to your will".)
I hope this is useful, even though I suspect you are just going to have to
remember that "no style" pop-down menu. If you are into designing your own
styles there are plenty of other things to have to remember! But the
benefits are many if you want to go beyond Word's default features, which I
infer may be your motivation.
-- Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
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* A suggestion: If you post a question, keep re-visiting the newsgroup for
several days after the first response comes in. Sometimes it takes a few
responses before the best or complete solution is proposed; sometimes you'll
be asked for further information so that a better answer can be provided.
Good tips about getting the best out of posting are at
http://word.mvps.org/FindHelp/Posting.htm
* Before posting a question about a topic, search Google Groups
(
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=group:*mac.office.word) --
it may have been comprehensively answered already.
* Please post all comments or follow-on questions to the newsgroup for the
benefit of others who may be interested. If you need to send an e-mail to me
directly (although that would be exceptional), remove the uppercase letters
from my address above. Please note that e-mails with an attachment will be
automatically rejected.
* If anyone is still reading down this far, here's a question: is it time
for you to back up your Normal template and all your Word settings files?
(This should be on a medium other than the internal hard drive and, if you
also want to protect against theft and fire, stored in a different
building.)
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