Styles woes

[Seamus Conlon]

Hi,

I am having problems in Word 2000 with styles when importing large sections
of one document into a new one.

I open a new doucment using a user-defined template, say proposal.dot, which
has its own set of custom styles. I then want to insert into it a large
portion of an existing document, which I received from a colleague, and that
has its own set of different styles. When I do a normal copy/paste it seems
that the styles in the existing document replace/overwrite the ones in the
new one. I guess it makes sense that the styles in the existing document
should be imported, so that the formatting is retained. But, I would also
like to keep the styles that already exist in the new document.

Is this possible, anyone?

Thanks .

Seamus

 

[Stephanie Krieger]

Hi, Seamus,

A style can only have one definition in a single
document. All you have to do to correct this is make sure
that the same style name doesn't exist in both documents
for those styles that need to keep the inserted
document's formatting once it's inserted into the main
document.

So, what you want to do is make sure that all styles you
want to retain from the new document have unique names
that don't exist in the original document.

Note that, if you're using any system styles that exist
in both documents (such as Heading 1 and Heading 2) and
you need the new document's formatting for those styles
to be retained -- you'll need to not use system styles
(create new styles with the formatting you want).

Hope that helps.

Stephanie Krieger
author of Microsoft Office Document Designer (from
Microsoft Press)
email: MODD_2003 at msn dot com
blog: arouet.net

-----Original Message-----
Hi,

I am having problems in Word 2000 with styles when importing large sections
of one document into a new one.

I open a new doucment using a user-defined template, say proposal.dot, which
has its own set of custom styles. I then want to insert into it a large
portion of an existing document, which I received from a colleague, and that
has its own set of different styles. When I do a normal copy/paste it seems
that the styles in the existing document

replace/overwrite the ones in the

 

[Seamus Conlon]

Thanks for that Stephanie, it does help but not entirely.

As an example, I have the ususal system styles Heading 1,
Heading 2 etc (though I have changed their formats) in my
new document. When I import the existing document these
styles disappear and I get new (system?) styles with names
such as:

Heading 1,Heading 2 + Before: 12 pt,After: 3 pt,Line spacing: single +
Bef...,h1,l1,No numbers,1,Header 1,II+,I,H1,1st level,I1,Chapter
title,l1+toc 1,Level 1,Level 11,Head 1,Head 11,Head 12,Head 111,Head 13,Head
112,Head 14,Head 113,Head 15,Head 114

I'm not sure how you can even get names like this, it seems to
be the full description of the style.

Thanks,
Seamus

 

[Graham Mayor]

Tools > options > edit > uncheck 'keep track of formatting'.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Seamus Conlon]

I don't see a checkbox for ''keep track of formatting''.

Seamus

 

[Graham Mayor]

It is certainly present in Word 2003 - but I currently don't have 2000 to
check. What you are seeing are the manual formatting changes to the
underlying styles. If you update the styles to reflect the changes the
problem should not appear. Unfortunately I cannot test this for you at
present.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It was added in Word 2002.

 

[Seamus Conlon]

Ah, I am using Word 2000 so that explains it. But I have often changed
underlying styles and have not seen these changes listed as part of the
style names.

I checked the style names in the existing document and they are the usual
Heading 1, Heading 2 etc. In the template that I am using for the new
document again the styles names are the normal ones. So where and why is it
adding these strange ones from. I have the Track Changes option off in both
documents.

Seamus