Using Template to Assign Styles to Existing Documents

[Deglen]

Word 2007. I've been completely unsuccessful in figuring this out--hopefully
someone can help.

I have created a template with my desired styles, labelled PRT, ART, AND
PR1,2,3 etc. I have several existing documents which have exactly the same
style names, but the formatting is different. BTW, I'm using a Multilevel
List, and the levels are identical as best I can tell. I was hoping that I
could simply copy and paste, or insert, the text from each of the documents
with the unwanted styles into a new document created from the template with
the desired styles.

When I do so, all of the styles are given direct formatting, primarily by
adding "+ Jusified" to the Style. In addition, the outline changes
completely. For example, if the Level tied to PR1 was supposed to be "A.",
it becomes "a)".

I've set my paste options to "Match Destination" and my template to
"Automatically Update Document Styles." I've tried restricting the
formatting of the styles, and done every version of "Paste Special" as well
as Text Object Insert. I get exactly the same result every time.

What am I missing?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What happens if you Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Q?

 

[Deglen]

That works--great! Why is it happening in the first place, though?

Also, still have one minor glitch: in my template, I have a line of text
that says "End of Section". It is Style PRT + Centered. When I bring in the
text from the other document, this piece of text gets converted to another
style and is given an outline format. It doesn't seem to matter whether I
paste the text before or after this line. I can manually reset it, but is
there any way to keep it correctly formatted in the first place?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If this is an actual section break, it may well be inherited the style of
the following paragraph.

 

[PamC via OfficeKB.com]

That works--great! Why is it happening in the first place, though?

Check out your Word options > advanced > cut, copy paste settings. There,
you tell Word how to handle styles and formatting when you paste.

The pre-W2007 behavior and the default W2007 behavior is to _attempt_
preserve the original styles and formatting when pasting.

PamC

Also, still have one minor glitch: in my template, I have a line of text
that says "End of Section". It is Style PRT + Centered. When I bring in the
text from the other document, this piece of text gets converted to another
style and is given an outline format. It doesn't seem to matter whether I
paste the text before or after this line. I can manually reset it, but is
there any way to keep it correctly formatted in the first place?

What happens if you Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Q?

[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]

 

[Deglen]

I think I somewhat sorted it out--but not enough to know how to fix it. It's
not a section break, just a piece of text with direct formatting applied (to
center it). When I bring in the text from the other document, it's fine.
However, the direct formatting gets deleted when I use Ctrl+Q, even though I
specifically did NOT include that piece of text in my selection.