Why Do Styles Work This Way?

[existential.philosophy]

I am creating a simple Word document. Even though the document is
simple, I've found it very difficult to manage the styles. After a lot
of effort, I've been able to get the document formatted the way I
want, but I feel that I lack some critical understanding of styles
which makes the difference between skillful use and frustration. Can
someone help me with answers to these specific questions:

1) I've found that the easiest way to modify a style is to edit the
format of the text, then to use "Update to Match Selection" in the
Styles and Formatting Task Pane. However, "Update to Match Selection"
is often disabled for no apparent reason. For instance, right now I
want to change the font size for the "Normal" style from 12 point to
10 point. I can do it with "Modify", but not with "Update to Match
Selection". Why?

2) I added a table of contents to my document. The table of contents
uses the styles "Hyperlink" and "TOC 1". In the Styles and Formatting
Task Pane, I've selected "Show Formatting in use", but neither
"Hyperlink" nor "TOC 1" appears in the list. If "Show Formatting in
use" doesn't mean "show formatting in use", what does it mean?

-TC

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

"Formatting" in this instance may be contrasted with "styles." In "Styles
and Formatting," "formatting" refers to direct formatting added on top of a
style; if you haven't done that, then you wouldn't see anything, and in any
case you wouldn't see a style listed as "formatting." If you display "Styles
in use," you may or may not see TOC 1 or Hyperlink (the display in the task
pane tends to reflect MS's assumption that there are some styles you really
don't need to know about, especially ones it applies automatically, such as
TOC styles and the Hyperlink style).

FWIW, the TOC style is the underlying paragraph style; Hyperlink is a
character style that is added if you choose to have the entire TOC entry
(instead of just the page number) hyperlinked. Although the Hyperlink style
is defined as blue and underlined, this formatting is suppressed for TOCs
and hyperlinked cross references (and cannot be made to appear); it appears
only if you unlink the field (at which point, ironically, the hyperlinks
aren't actually active any more).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org