OK. So at least I'll change the subject line for Clive and
Suzanne but I'll leave it on this thread since it does have a lot
to do with why the O.P. is having some grief
My favorite quote was by (I believe) Mr. Einstein. It goes
something like this:
"Every problem should be reduced to its simplest form--but NOT
simpler!"
Although it is necessary for management to simplify issues in
order to manage them, the world is FULL of complete, total,
screw-ups because of some lame-brain with a lot of corporate
power (or a design team that has not been given decent system
analysis and/or requirements modeling support) oversimplifying an
inherently complicated issue (or an issue that is more complex
than they want to deal with because they can't even understand it
themselves!).
Trying to hide the essential superstructure of a product from the
very people who need to use it (especially software tools) is
just plain dumb. It's like building a house with glass walls.
Everytime you want to go to the kitchen, or the back door, you're
going to ram into something! That's fine and even occasionally
fun in a circus, but not when you have to get things done. If the
walls are visible, the inexperienced person with the only desire
to get to the back door may wonder what those walls are all
about, but AT LEAST THEY KNOW THAT THEY ARE THERE AND CAN CAUSE
THEM PAIN IF IGNORED.
Styles are the superstructure of Word document creation and
manipulation. They should be clearly visible by default so that
an individual (especially newbies) at least knows that they are
there and when trying to get from point A (e.g., how come when I
try to change these paragraphs, only some of them change...) to
point B (I want these all to change together...) they don't keep
ramming into an invisible wall that they can't see (turn on the
style names area and look at their names--Oh, gee! they don't all
have the same name--I see what's going on!).
In spite of MS's attempt to "simplify" the styles issues by
"wishing them away" (i.e., just hide them), ultimately everyone
ramming into the wall STILL has to learn something about them
anyway in order to accomplish what they need to--so why not at
least make them visible so that right from day one, everyone
knows at least that they exist?
IF MS really wanted to help simplify things, they should (among
other things):
1) Have the normal DEFAULT for the style area width be .8 inches
or thereabouts. If people don't like it, they can turn it off
after they know it exists. After all, we have to do that for
every other friggin' feature in Word anyway, why not this one?!?
2) Develop a set of default styles that at least MAKEs SENSE, are
consistent, and looks nice when used with DECENT SPACINGS, since
they refuse to document this stuff anyway (why in the world is
Heading 8 a larger font than Heading 6? They are all in the same
outline number set. Just because you CAN make them different
doesn't mean the defaults should look scrambled). Make it a
simple set. Put all the fancy letter head and resume stuff in
custom templates so we don't have to wade through all that
garbage for EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT WE MAKE! Most people don't
really WANT to spend all of their spare time and holiday
vacations trying to learn how to create and subsequently
generating their own custom templates. Shoot, I know how to do
this now and I STILL haven't really gotten around to it :-S
(Of course this would reduce some of the usefulness of papers
produced by John and Clive on useful style sets, but I don't
think that they would mind much...)
Now, relative to the original poster's scenario. It's fine to
keep all that formatting with paragraphs when they are copied in
from another document as long as it is easy, intuitive, and
obvious how to force their formats back to the style master in
the new document. But this is even made complicated by MS's
defaults hiding stuff. Why in the world is the Reset Para and the
Reset Character Formatting functions not under the Format menu by
default so that you can undo formatting inconsistencies
introduced from other document texts such as is happening to the
Original Poster?? You have to now learn how to customize tool
bars and menus in order to put something back that never should
have been left out IMHO.
Well, maybe there IS some reasoning since even those functions
don't always perform the intended/expected application anyway and
that does cause confusion.
E.g., when you put a number list style in a paragraph style, the
number list style takes over the paragraph style's indentation,
etc.. Besides the fact that this is a totally non-cohesive and
brain-dead way of handling these object inheritances and their
attributes in the first place (ain't gonna go there, Nope, ain't
gonna do it...), if you select the paragraph and do a Reset Para
on it, the numbering attribute doesn't necessarily return to
those defined in that document's paragraph style as would be
expected. So even after the reset, the paragraph STILL may not
behave and appear as other paragraphs with the style.
(And why don't we have an automatic function that when all styles
and/or paragraphs that use a particular number list have been
deleted, the "last one out turns off the light" and that number
list style/template is purged? Its not used anymore and since
there is no decent way to tell them apart in the galleries, they
become useless flotsam in the bowels of your documents where they
accumulate like scum on a Texas pond until there is enough there
that you can no longer even open the document without something
crashing)
Why? Why? Why?
(...pant, pant...)
Well, I feel much better now! Time for dinner...
