Styles

[Ted_King]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I find the styles panel of the formatting palette pretty unwieldy with 300 styles that the tutorial tells me cannot be deleted.

Can I create a new "normal" document that has a custom set of styles designed to my workflow and without the default styles provided by Word?

If that's not possible, is there some way to expand the styles panel to show more than 5 styles at a time or maybe work with styles outside of the very small formatting palette?

 

[Tim Murray]

If you don't have stuff you want to keep -- styles, macros, keyboard
changes -- in the old template, just delete Library/Application
Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/Normal.dotm.

Next time you launch Word, you will have only four default styles.

 

[CyberTaz]

Sorry, Tim, but this isn't correct re Styles

Any new generation of the Normal template will contain all of Word's
built-in styles. As the OP indicated, they cannot be deleted. What's a
little deceptive, perhaps, is how many of those styles appear in the Styles
Pane (Formatting Palette) & the Styles list (Formatting Toolbar). That's
controlled by the drop-down @ the bottom of the Styles pane in the
Formatting Palette where you can choose to display either "Available Styles"
or "All Styles". The default setting is "Available Styles" which is why only
Heading 1-3, Normal, & Clear Formatting are listed.

Also -- for managing Styles -- there is a similar drop-down in the Format>
Style... Dialog which offers 'Styles in use', 'All Styles' & 'User-defined
Styles' as options. The choice there affects only what appears in the list
of Styles presented in that dialog.

The only Styles that can be deleted are those created by the user.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Ted;

In Mac Word your best bet is to open the list at the bottom of the Styles
group of the Formatting Palette & select 'Available Styles' -- it sounds as
though you have it set to display 'All Styles'. Setting it to 'available'
will display only 4 of the built-in Styles [ Heading 1-3 & Normal] along
with any user-defined Styles stored in the Normal.dotm template when you
create a new document. If you use any of the other built-in Styles in the
document they then will appear in the list when working in that document.

The built-in styles cannot be deleted because they're used by Word, itself.

Although you can't modify the Formatting Palette you can use the Styles List
on the Formatting Toolbar instead. It automatically resizes based on the
number of Styles in use in the document you're working with. The Styles List
control can also be added to a Custom Toolbar if you wish.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Ted_King]

Thanks both to Tim Murray and Bob Jones. Now I've got to puzzle out why the style dialogue box of the format menu and the styles portion of the Formatting Palette have different options (Available Styles vs. Styles in Use) and show a different limited set of styles.

It took me a bit of work to puzzle out that my system didn't have a Users Templates folder and what the heck the "normal" document was in my Microsoft Users Data folder (documents folder) since it didn't have any kind of extension but info identified it as a Microsoft 1997-2004 Word template. That is apparently what my system was using when it opened a blank document. Just tells me that I should have done the upgrade to 2008 rather than letting IT do it. What a mess.

So the old "normal" document is gone, my Users Templates folder and normal.dotm template are in place. Now I have to go back to the instructions and see if I can puzzle out the different flavors of styles and get my new document template to do what I want.

 

[Iggles14]

If Microsoft had half a brain, the "List" option in the Styles part of the Formatting Palette would also include "User defined styles" as an option.

 

[John McGhie]

Three questions:

1) What difference would this make?

2) How would the system know the styles were user-defined?

3) Most users do not define any styles, they customise the built-in styles,
which is the recommended approach. What would you list under those
circumstances?

I am trying to understand what you're trying to achieve...

Cheers

If Microsoft had half a brain, the "List" option in the Styles part of the
Formatting Palette would also include "User defined styles" as an option.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]