Word Formatting is driving me crazy

[Kathie M. Thomas]

How do I switch off whatever the default options are for Word 2003? I find
that it keeps changing things I don't want changed, i.e. if I highlight a
line of text to bold it, change the font size or italicise, it does it to
the whole document too. If I then press ctrl+z it undoes the rest of the
document and just leaves the line I want changed but this seems to be
ridiculous. I've gone into the autoformat feature and, Options and unticked
the Always format plain text WordMail documents in case that had anything to
do with it, but it hasn't changed this silly problem. I've switched off a
lot of other options too, but basically I just want Word to behave itself as
it did in Word 2000 and not assume what I want formatted.

Any assistance greatly appreciated as mucking around with this is adding
considerable time to work I do for clients.

Thank you,

Kathie M. Thomas, AFAIOP, MVA, ASO
Award-winning "A Clayton's Secretary"®, Network est. 1994
The Secretary You Need When You Haven't Got a Secretary!®
Ph: +613 9585 5780 Web: http://www.vadirectory.net
New eBooks! How to become a VA & Work From Home
http://www.vadirectory.net/bookstore.htm
***************************************************************

 

[mpt]

Try this:

1. Ctrl-shift-S
2. Modify
3. Uncheck "automatically update"

Richard

 

[Kathie M. Thomas]

Thanks but Ctrl-shift-s actually brings up my screensaver - doesn't do
anything with Word. So not sure where the modify and automatically update
info is that you're referring to if I can't get number 1 to work with Word.

 

[Mike Seddon]

Kathie,

I believe the screen that CTRL+Shift+S should bring up is the styles
selection.

The problem sounds like your styles are set to automatically update
all occurances of the style throughout the document as you can one of
them. Change one paragraph that is written in Normal style and ALL the
paragraphs that are written in Normal style will update.

Try one or both of the following.

1) Select Format from your menu.
2) Select Styles and Formatting.
3) In the Styles & Formatting pane (which generally appears on the
right of your screen, move your move over the style you want to stop
changing (eg: Normal). You should see a drop down arrow appear. Select
it.
4) One of the options will be Modify. Select that.
5) A dialog box will appear. Bottom right you should see Automatically
Update as an option. If it is checked, uncheck it.

I think you can also do this by just going to Tools, then Templates
and Add Ins. A dialog appears. A the top will be the name of your
template. Underneath with be a check box which says "Automatically
update document styles". If this is checked. Uncheck it.


Good luck.

Mike


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please take my short survey on Word Documents. Thanks.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=302241456010