Styles not working right

[Deej Hernandez]

I have several style sets that I use with different document in Microsoft
Office Standard 2007 Word. When I try to apply a style to highlighted words
inside a paragraph it applies the style to the entire paragraph instead of
just the highlighted words. How do I get it to apply to just the selected
words?

 

[Stefan Blom]

Usually, you would want to create a *character* style and apply it to the
selected words (or any part of a paragraph).

However, if you are trying to format part of a paragraph for inclusion in
the table of contents, you should be able to insert a style separator in text
and then apply the desired paragraph style.

Note that the Style separator command is not available by default; you will
have to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar (via Word Options, Customize).

 

[Deej Hernandez]

I do not use any of the styles with a table of contents. I may have
forgotten to mention that my styles were all working perfectly fine before.
They stopped working right about a week ago.

So please tell me what a *character* style is and how to make mine work again.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Please expain what you are trying to do. From your description, using a
character style seems to be the easiest solution.

To create a character style, you can use the New Style button in the Styles
pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S).

For more on styles in general, see this article:

Style basics in Word
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA102308821033.aspx?pid=CH100970201033

 

[Deej Hernandez]

I use Office 2007 word and Adobe Acrobat to convert books to PDF files for
portable readers. From your explanation and the article link you included I
have figured out that all of my character styles are somehow now linked
styles. Is there any way to change them back to character only styles? They
were all working as character styles until a week or so ago and I have no
idea how they all got changed.

 

[Stefan Blom]

If the styles are indeed of the "linked" type, you should be able to use
them to apply formatting to selected text, assuming that "Disable linked
styles" is cleared in the Styles pane, as PamC explained.

But, as I wrote in my previous reply, it makes more sense to use character
styles for the task you have described.