Hi Suzanne,
Interesting.
Word has a problem: the "automatic update" setting for paragraph styles is
invisible. So the user doesn't see why the style has changed when all he's
tried to do is apply direct formatting. And if other affected paragraphs
aren't in the vicinity, he won't even see that it's happened.
Moreover, as you point out at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm , "it’s
not entirely clear" how the setting gets turned on in the first place, at
least in the case of the Normal style.
But the invisibility of the setting is a problem for all styles, not just
Normal, and no doubt confuses many users.
Word's designers could address this in various ways:
- Best way: un-conceal the setting. Change it so when "automatic update" is
on, the user sees it on the Format/Paragraph dialogue (and can get a "?"
explanation there and change the setting there). One way to show the setting
would be to change the dialogue title from "Paragraph" to "Paragraph Style:
'pricelist'" (or whatever).
- Bad way: they could kill the "automatic update" feature.
- Worse way: they could kill the "automatic update" feature for just the
"Normal" style, since that causes problems most often.
- Worst way: they could leave the "automatic update" feature completely
untouched (and so do nothing about the real problem), but make it impossible
for a user to manually, explicitly, deliberately, tell Word that he wants
direct formatting he has already applied to be used to update a style. And,
just to be perverse, they could do that for only the "Normal" style, because
automatic updates (though not manual updates) cause problems with Normal
most often. That way, a feature that usefully works on every other style
won't be available for Normal, and users will be a little more perplexed.
If I understand you, you're guessing that last option was the one they
pursued to address the problem.
Possibly to make it a bit harder for users to do this inadvertently. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm for
evidence of the havoc this causes.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
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