My custom styles are acquiring unwanted attributes

[Guest]

I have a custom table body style based on <no style>.

I have applied specific attributes tot he style and it has worked well for
me until today.

When the style is applied, the paragraph displays with bullets and tabs. The
TableBody style has no such attributes and i have to manually select
occurences and use the formatting bar to remove the unwanted attributes.

How and where are these attributes becoming linked ot the style. I have
checked the style settings and there is no indication that the unwanted
attributes have been applied to the style.

How can I fix this problem?

I dont want to trash the template because it is a custom template with many
styles and macros.

Is there a way to "get under the hood" and clean out the template?

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Check your TableBody style is not set to "Automatically Update" - if it is
then when you bullet a TableBody paragraph that setting will get applied to
the style as well.

If that's not it then have a look in Format > Bullets and Numbering and
reset any pane that shows a bullet format with the TableBody stylename - if
that bullet formatting gets applied it will create the link to the style,
even if the style was not previously bulleted.

Either way, you will also need to modify the TableBody style itself to
remove the bullet formatting it seems to have picked up.

 

[Guest]

The TableBody Style does has not itself picked up any bulleting in the style
setting whatsoever making this problem all the more mysterious. Each time I
apply the style to a paragraph, the bullets are applied. When i select an
"infected" paragraph, open the Format > Bullets and Numbering / Paragraph
dialog boxes, the rogue settings are in place but when i select to modify the
style itself, there are no such settings in place.

I don't usually use the formatting toolbar at all except in this instance i
already did use it to reset the bullets with my custom style name as you have
also suggested.

I prefer to use custom styels for all formatting including bullets and bold
as well. Every custom style has been created from scratch and based on the
<no style> option. Even though this makes global updating a very inelegant
chore, which i avoid having to do.

Automatic updates is not selected for any style. Numbered styles are custom
ones included in macro sequences that insert fileds for restarting counters
and continuing.
I try as far as I am able to maintain a "safe" template unhindered by common
problems that Word is prone to create.

Thanks for your suggestions but is there something else i can do?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the style doesn't include bullets, then pressing Ctrl+Q in any "infected"
paragraph should remove them.

--
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]

That doesn't work for me but then I selected a random paragraph in the table
with the TableBody style applied and clicked on Format > Reveal Formatting. I
expanded "Table" under which is listed, "Table Style: List Bullet"
What does this mean, is the table itself rather than the paragraph style
somehow affected?
I can't figure out where to change this and i cant exactly figure out how to
see which Table style is applied to my table. There is no table style listed
called "List Bullet" in my list of Table Styles in Use. I originally based
my custom table on "Table Normal".
Does this information shed light on the issue?
Any ideas what to do about it?

 

[Guest]

I've reapplied the correct table style to my tables by placing the cursor or
selecting the table, clicking the Table > Table Style link in Reveal
Formatting and selecting the appropriate table style from the list in Table
AutoFormat dialog box.

Strange though that my tables acquired a style called "List Bullet" which
doesn't exist in my list of "Tables styles in use". Or, maybe not strange for
Word.

Thanks to Margaret Aldis and Suzanne S. Barnhill for your contributions.

 

[Guest]

..... i forgot to add that my tableBody style now no longer acquires a bullet
when appplied to a paragraph in the table so i can only assume that the
problem was somehow caused by a property in the phantom table style "List
Bullet".

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Table styles and list styles are two innovations that are not quite ready
for prime time.

--
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]

Are there any articles or documents that sheds more light on working with
these?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I don't know of any. Most knowledgeable users who have tried to use them
have found them (a) undocumented, (b) frustrating, and (c) probably a good
idea that was incompletely implemented. We're hoping for improvement in Word
12.

--
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.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Thank you so much for coming back with the additional information on this. I
think your analysis sounds right, but since there is no official way of
getting a Table Style to apply a Paragraph Style or list formatting, and
you should not have been able to create a Table Style with the same name as
a built-in Paragraph Style (List Bullet), I think you should treat this
cross-over as a potential corruption, and clean out the file (rebuild the
template in a fresh document).

Given that List Templates can't be deleted, I would guess that your document
or template still contains a List Template in which one of the levels is
linked to a table style . In following up on your post I managed to do this
from the B&N dialog, and achieved a similar effect to the one you
described - within a table set to this rogue table style, all the paragraphs
took on and retained the linked numbering format, regardless of the
paragraph formatting.