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Subject:Update all styles in Word 2000? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 3 Dec 2003 09:15:12 -0500
David O'Brien wonders: <<Does anyone know how to update all formatting in a
Word document to that defined by all the styles in the attached template?>>
Unfortunately, there's no easy way to do it. The problem arises from a Word
feature: if you override a paragraph style by manually applying formatting,
Word assumes that you have a good reason for doing so, and if you apply a
new style to the paragraph (or reapply the old style), it won't override
your manual formatting. Or sometimes it will; there are occasional
unpredictable behaviors. This is Word we're talking about, after all. On the
whole, it's a smart design choice, but it does have its drawbacks--as you've
discovered.
Fortunately, you can get most of the work done quickly and automatically,
though at the cost of losing manually applied formatting. If you're willing
to pay that cost, simply do a "select all" (Control-A), then press
Control-Spacebar. That's the keyboard shortcut for "remove all manual
formatting and reapply the original style definition". But you _will_ lose
your bold and italics, any manually applied indentation, and so on, not to
mention (most times) any character styles you've applied to parts of a
paragraph.
--Geoff Hart, ghart -at- [delete]videotron -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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Baron Frankenstein and his monster. William Henry Gates and Windows
'09."--David Brin, _Kiln People_
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