Eeeewww.... This is NOT a 'simple' question
But you are absolutely
right to ask it ‹ as a novice, until you know this you can't really begin to
learn to use Word in an "Expert" fashion.
Oh, and before anyone from the Mac Word side of the fence leaps in with
howls of "we don't have all of those things in Mac Word" let me just say
"Yet. Watch this space."
OK, let's see if I can put this in some sort of order for you:
A 'Style' is simply a collection of formatting properties that you have
given a name to. There are two other meanings for the word, but in
Microsoft Word, it's a "named collection of formatting properties".
Word has four 'kinds' of style:
* Character (holding only the Font properties),
* Paragraph (also adding the indent and spacing properties for a
Paragraph),
* List, which contains only the formatting properties for a bulleted or
numbered list (and may link to nine Paragraph styles to do the rest of the
formatting) and
* Table, which contains all the formatting for a Table.
A 'Quick Style' is simply one of the styles you have chosen to display in
the Quick Access List (Either on the Quick Access Toolbar or Ribbon in Word,
or in the Formatting Palette in Mac Word). When you decide to Bend Word to
Your Will one of the things you do is set all the "rubbish" styles
invisible so they do not get in your way while you are working. What is
left will become your Quick Styles.
A "Style Set" is quite simply a 'Set' of Styles. It enables you to switch
the selection of formatting within a document without needing to change the
template. You might want to do this, for example, if your Template contains
program code you want to use for all documents, but you wish to use that
template to prepare two kinds of similar documents. For example, a Report
for Internal Purposes Only, and a Report for Public Distribution.
To my knowledge, nobody has yet found a good use for "Style Sets". But you
can get up to some interesting XML tricks using them, if your life lacks
purpose
A 'Theme' Can be thought of as a 'Document Style'. It contains the colour
palette and font faces for the styles in a document. It's a crude use of
the Cascading Style Sheet, and in future will be able to completely
transform a document, but right now, all it does is stuff up your styles by
switching fonts and colours when you least expect it
A 'Template" is a storage container. You could think of it as having the
same relationship to a document as a shopping trolley does to a shop.
Everything in the shop could potentially be in the shopping trolley, but as
a practical matter, it won't all fit and you wouldn't want it all
The
content of a shopping trolley can come from several different shops. On the
other hand, if something is NOT in any shop, it "can't" be in the shopping
trolley.
OK, this analogy breaks down, so lets drop it here...
A template is a container file that has multiple 'shelves', each containing
different kinds of things. There's a shelf full of styles. One full of
building blocks. One containing "AutoText" (a kind of building block), one
containing executable code (VBA Macros), and one containing "List Templates"
(components of a list style). Themes can be stored in templates.
Whenever Word creates a document, it imports all the basic settings and text
from whichever template you chose to use. If you don't choose a template,
Word uses the Normal template as the model.
It is important to understand that a Template is NOT a document: internally,
the two files are quite different. But it does contain the 'model' for a
document. A document is a simplification of the template: things such as
styles and lists are imported to the document from the template, items such
as building blocks and macros remain in the template but are available to
the document all the time that the template is available.
To understand and use templates, it is important to understand that a
document makes no further reference to the template after it has been
created, unless you force it. You might force it by forcing an update to
the styles in the document, or by running a macro, or by inserting a
building block. Each of these operations will cause Word to call out to the
template in the background to get whatever it is you want.
However, after Word draws something from a template, it stores it in the
document. If you use the "List Number 4" style, Word will copy it from the
template to the document and store it in the document before it uses it. If
you then change that style in the document, it will remain different from
the copy of the same style in the template unless you force Word to write
the change back to the template. If you change the style in the template,
the document will remain unchanged unless you force an update.
Macro code is an exception: Word uses the code from the template without
storing in the document. You can force Word to store a macro in a document,
but normally it will not do this and it's bad practice to force it.
You can have multiple templates referenced by a document. The Normal
template is always available: there may also be a link to the template used
to create the document, and a link to one or more global templates.
But all of the templates are simply storage files Word uses to save bits and
pieces that you may wish to use in the document.
So let me recap:
* A theme is a set of fonts and colours for a document. There can be
several themes in a document, but only one in use.
* A Template is a storage container for formatting, components, and macros.
There can be several templates attached to a document, but any given kind of
item can come from only one of them.
* A style set is a collection of styles within a document ‹ there can be
several style sets in a document, but only one in use.
* A quick style is one of the styles you have decided you want constantly
and quickly available. Each set of styles has its own set of quick styles.
OK: That's a very cryptic response. Please don't let the complexity throw
you. Keep asking questions and we will expand on that until you have
mastered it all.
Hope this helps
Could someone please help a novice understand the basic differences
between a theme, a template, and a style set? Also, how is a quick
style different from a style? Thanks for any advice. -DB
--
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John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:
[email protected]