Want to protect document styles, but still have access to paragraph formatting

[Mary]

The company I work for has set of Word templates that are seriously abused
by Word users who don't have any understanding of how to apply styles. I
figured that it would be a good idea, at least for some documents, to
protect the styles but I'm finding some drawbacks that I don't know how to
overcome.

The style Heading 1 does not normally start on a new page, but in some
documents we force it to start on a new page by checking "page break
before." However, this is not something I can do once the styles are
protected. The only solution I can come up with is to use manual page breaks
(which I dislike) or to create a second style Heading 1_pagebreakbefore.

Then there are times when I would want to use "keep with next" on the style
Normal, e.g., the lead in line before a set of bullets. Again, if the styles
are protected, I can't do that.

In a previous test using a document with protected styles, I also ran into a
lot of difficulties with tables. I had problems with header rows becoming
separated from the rest of the table and also of not being able to control
where tables split across pages.

Any advice would be most welcome.

 

[Stefan Blom]

in message

If you are saying that all occurrences of Heading 1 should start a new page
in some documents, you could create a specific template for those documents
(and enable the "Keep with next" option for the Heading 1 style).

Correction: enable the "Page break before" option...

 

[Mary]

I was afraid that would be the case. I suppose it's a matter of investing
time upfront in developing all the necessary styles instead of spending a
lot of time later clearing up the messes that result in people going wild
with manual formatting.