My boss hasn't used Styles, what is the solution?

[Guest]

My impression
I read the tutorial written by Charles Kyle Kenyon in http://addbalance.com/
about the importance of style. I was aware of that and have used styles to
some extent but after reading that I have decided not to make a file
(especially a long one) without using styles.

My problem
My boss has given a 500 page word file in 12 files standing for 12 chapters
of a report. He has asked me to amend different spacing and fonts in
different parts of the report and make it unique to look same. I thought
using the style could be the best solution. Original files don’t have styles.
When I open the style box many ugly hand-formatted styles with no name
occurs. I thought it would be possible to select paragraphs and change their
styles from style window but it didn’t work as I think the main style are
same but different paragraphs has minor changes. So what is your suggestion
for me? Shall I define a new style and go through all paragraphs and change
them? Is there any VBA solution to it automatically?
Also one more question: I want to know about the general fee of those who do
this job as paid consultancy. TIA

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Part of what you're seeing in the Styles and Formatting dialog (or Styles
dropdown) is probably "formatting" rather than styles. You can cut out a lot
of this underbrush by clearing the check box for "Keep track of formatting"
on the Edit tab of Tools | Options. Applying correct styles should remove
the direct formatting; if it doesn't, selecting the text and pressing
Ctrl+Spacebar and Ctrl+Q will certainly do so.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Dear Suzanne
Thanks for your comments. I always enjoy reading your FAQ and tutorials
which are very informative for me.
I did as you mentioned and most of those formatting disappeared. Thanks for
that. Now I want to change the style of a paragraph let say its style is
Arial (complex) Arial 12 bold (and this has no stlye name. Is it possible to
assign a name at this stage?) to another stlyle let say Arial (complex) Arial
12 (this one also has no style name). I put the curser in desired paragraph
and select the desired style from task pan (in far right). I expect to see
the change but nothing happens. Am I doing something wrong or there is
something more I have to consider.
One more question. there is a style symbol at the end of each style (namely
"a", I suppose for character style and a "return " symbol for paragraph
style). Is it possible to change these symbols in other words to Convert a
character symbol (style) to a Paragraph symbol (style)?
Thanks for all your contribution to Word Users.
--
Rasoul Khoshravan Azar
Civil Engineer
Osaka, Japan

Part of what you're seeing in the Styles and Formatting dialog (or Styles
dropdown) is probably "formatting" rather than styles. You can cut out a lot
of this underbrush by clearing the check box for "Keep track of formatting"
on the Edit tab of Tools | Options. Applying correct styles should remove
the direct formatting; if it doesn't, selecting the text and pressing
Ctrl+Spacebar and Ctrl+Q will certainly do so.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I supposed you could create a paragraph style based on a character style;
the character style would define the font formatting, but you'd have to add
the paragraph formatting. For more on styles, see these articles by Shauna
Kelly:

How to apply a style in Word
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ApplyAStyle.html

How to modify a style in Word
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ModifyAStyle.html

How the Styles and Formatting pane works in Word 2002 and 2003
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/sfpane/StylesAndFormattingPane.html

Shauna Kelly’s article on styles
http://www.microsoft.com/office/using/column14.asp

How styles in Word cascade
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/HowStylesCascade.html

Why use Word’s built-in heading styles?
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/UseBuiltInHeadingStyles.html

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Dear Suzanne
Thanks for your comments. I always enjoy reading your FAQ and tutorials
which are very informative for me.
I did as you mentioned and most of those formatting disappeared. Thanks for
that. Now I want to change the style of a paragraph let say its style is
Arial (complex) Arial 12 bold (and this has no stlye name. Is it possible to
assign a name at this stage?) to another stlyle let say Arial (complex) Arial
12 (this one also has no style name). I put the curser in desired paragraph
and select the desired style from task pan (in far right). I expect to see
the change but nothing happens. Am I doing something wrong or there is
something more I have to consider.
One more question. there is a style symbol at the end of each style (namely
"a", I suppose for character style and a "return " symbol for paragraph
style). Is it possible to change these symbols in other words to Convert a
character symbol (style) to a Paragraph symbol (style)?
Thanks for all your contribution to Word Users.

 

[Klaus Linke]

I did as you mentioned and most of those formatting disappeared. Thanks

for
that. Now I want to change the style of a paragraph let say its style is
Arial (complex) Arial 12 bold (and this has no stlye name. Is it possible
to
assign a name at this stage?) to another stlyle let say Arial (complex)
Arial
12 (this one also has no style name). I put the curser in desired
paragraph
and select the desired style from task pan (in far right). I expect to see
the change but nothing happens. Am I doing something wrong or there is
something more I have to consider.

If some kind of manual formatting (font, size, space before, whatever) is
applied on top of the style, changing that formatting in the style will no
longer affect the text formatting.
Manual formatting beats styles.

When you unchecked "Keep track of formatting", you just hid the applied
manual formatting, but it is still there.

You'll have to clean it up, or start formatting from scratch.

There are some tools that promise to do (some of) this automatically such as
DocTidy, but I have limited experience with them, and the success likely
depends on whether the (manual) formatting is somewhat consistent to start
with.

Regards,
Klaus