How do I modify Styles?

[Chris HT]

I have been struggling with this for years in Styles. When I select to
"modify" a style in the Styles and Formatting pane, I will sometimes get the
message "This style name already exists or is reserved for a built-in style."
And no matter what I do I can not modify it.

 

[Lene Fredborg]

You are not allowed to create a style with the same name as any existing
style. A document contains many built-in styles and the names of those styles
cannot be changed (a few examples of style names that are reserved for
built-in styles: Body Text, Heading 1, Heading 2, Header, Footer).

The message you refer to indicates that you are trying to create a new style
and name it like an existing style (custom or built-in) or that you are
trying to change the name of an existing style to an already used name.

The following two articles may help you.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/TipsOnStyles.html
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ModifyAStyle.html

--
Regards
Lene Fredborg
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word

 

[Stefan Blom]

Chris,

I've seen such messages in documents created with a different language
version of Word (style name aliases might be an issue too). You could try
changing the style in question in another document and then copy it over
using the Organizer.