how do I get character based styles to work in word 2007?

[Guest]

I use character based styles in Word - worked fine in Word 2002 but in 2007 I
keeps struggling to make them work consistently. Despite setting every aspect
of fontstyle in the font options, the underlying style seems to affect the
outcome. Sometimes clearing all formatting solves this, but at other times it
doesn't. I like to have more than one style on the same line (which is why I
use character based styles) but that is very hard to achieve using quick
styles.
What has happened with styles in 2007?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

I would start by getting rid of any variant formatting. Any non-style-based
direct formatting can confuse Word 2007's pecking order of which style gets
"listened to." Select the whole paragraph and press Ctrl+Spacebar. This
resets the character formatting to that of the underlying paragraph style.
Next, apply the character style you want to a subset of that paragraph. Does
that work for you? If not, I might begin to suspect document or template
corruption.

You might also want to try using Ctrl+Shift+S--the Apply Styles tool--to
apply styles. I find that I get better control and better information that
way (easier to distinguish character versus paragraph styles). There is also
a Classic style tool that can be added to the Quick Access Toolbar, which
gives you something resembling the formatting toolbar's Style tool we had in
Word 2003 and earlier. (To get it, when customizing the QAT, set the list to
Commands not in the ribbon, and look for a tool named Style. When you hover
the mouse over it, it says "(StyleGalleryClassic)" in the command
description.)

Good luck!

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the response.
I have tried this extensively since, tried deleating normal.comx and
recreated styles in a variety of ways, but I still find character based
styles behave unpredictably.
The major problem seems to revolve around italics. A style which has plain
style will suddenly have italics and styles with italics will suddenly appear
upright.
I can only conclude that there are some bugs in Word 2007 handling of
character based styles.
Trevor