Unexplained Change of Word Styles

[frankc]

I have a problem with an unexplained change of Microsoft Word styles
after a copy of one portion of a document into another document.

The Word document Lesson 4, maintained by person A, uses only
"SeniorNet" styles. A Word Find for Style Normal finds no hits.

Lesson 4 is copied to Lesson 4B, which is modified by person B. A
subsequent Word Find for Style Normal finds no hits.

Lesson 4 is modified by person A. A subsequent Word Find for Style
Normal finds no hits.

The modified portion of Lesson 4B is copied and pasted (with no special
options) into Lesson 4. Some -- but not all -- of the styles of the
copied/pasted portion are changed from the appropriate "SeniorNet"
styles to Normal. A subsequent Word Find for Style Normal finds the
changed styles.

Starting with copies of backups taken just before the copy/paste from
Lesson 4B to Lesson 4, the scenario has been reproduced using both
Office XP running under Windows 98SE, and Office 2003 running under
Windows XP.

Why does this happen? What can be done to prevent it?

frankc

 

[Guest]

Hi Frank-

Although there could be more complex issues at work, my first guess would be
that the styles you are using are Paragraph Styles, and when the modified
content of 4B is being copied the user is _not_ copying a *complete*
paragraph including the ¶ at the end of the paragraph. That symbol is what
carries the paragraph's style info, and if it isn't being copied, the content
is pasted as _Normal+..._, where the + represents any character attributes
the style carries which deviate from Normal, itself. Since the paragraph
formatting attibs are not included, the style is not actually being copied.
Especially if the content is not being pasted into a para that has the
desired style already applied to it.

To prevent it, make sure that the ¶ gets copied. If there are some
situations where that is impractical, whoever does the pasting in can simply
reapply the correct style or paste into a style-based para.

HTH |:>)

 

[frankc]

Hi CyberTaz-

The portion of document 4B to be copied was selected as follows.
The show/hide button was turned on, so as to display paragraph marks.
The cursor was positioned at the beginning of the content to be copied.
The document was scrolled down to the end of the content to be copied.
The Shift key was depressed.
The cursor was clicked at the end of the content to be copied
(including the paragraph mark).

I am trying to figure out what would cause the paste operation to be
confused. I am listing all the styles in both documents 4 and 4B

1. I verified that all the styles used in both documents were all
"SeniorNet" styles. If the definition or content of a style with a
given name were to differ between documents 4 and 4B, would that cause
the paste operation to revert to a least common denominator, so to
speak, of Normal?

2. What would person A and or person B do that would change the
definition of a style with a given name, or to create a new
"SeniorNet" style with a similar, but different definition? It
would be good if we could determine what actions to avoid in the
future.

Thanks for your feedback. It's greatly appreciated.

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Frank

I can think of two things that might cause this behaviour.

The first is that text pastes as Normal style if it is pasted into a
document that is protected for styles, and the text is in a style that is
not allowed in the destination document. But that functionality was only
introduced in Word 2003. So you shouldn't see that in Word 2002. In any
case, in Word 2003, do Tools > Protect Document to see if style Protection
is in effect.

The other is that the paste command might have been hijacked by an add-in so
that it forces text to be pasted in Normal style. I've certainly written
code like that in the past (although I gave the user some warning as to what
was going on!). Try running Word in Safe Mode to see if you observe the same
behaviour. To do that, Start > Run. Type winword.exe /a (note the space
before the slash). That will open Word but will not load any add-ins. If
that solves the problem, you'll have to find the culprit add-in and either
re-write it or uninstall it. Look for Sub EditPaste and Sub
EditPasteSpecial.

For information on finding add-ins see:

How to find out whether any Word Add-ins have been installed
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CheckIfAddinsInstalled.htm
and
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011514521033.aspx

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[frankc]

Hi Shauna

I checked Word 2003. There are no restrictions; style protection is
not in effect.

I checked for Add-ins for both Word 2002 and Word 2003.

Word 2002 had 2 add-ins available.
Microsoft Word East European Fonts Tool
Web Page Wizard.
Both were Load on Demand. I assume both were installed with Office XP.

Word 2003 had 3 add-ins available.
Microsoft Word East European Fonts Tool (Load on Demand) (Assumed
installed with Office 2003)
OmniPage Pro 14.0 COM Addin (Load st Startup)
PDF Converter 3.0 Addin (Load at Startup)

Since results were consistent on both systems, I didn't think it was
necessary to interfere with use of OmniPage or PDF Converter.

Since both the Word 2002 add-ins were Load on Demand, I didn't think
either of them would have been the cause. Nevertheless, I did the
Start / Run winword.exe /a test. The results were the same as before.

All 16 of the "SeniorNet" styles are paragraph styles. Three -
SrNet Normal, SrNetBullets1, and SrNetBullets2 - are basically
FontDefault)Times New Roman, 13 pt English (U.S.), with various
additional settings. The rest refer back to SrNet Normal or to one of
the others (no circular definitions, as far as I can tell).

Thanks for your help. I really appreciate any suggestions.