I am using a .dot that has font styles specified. When I use the formatting painter to adjust my predefined bullets, the formatting painter will make the change I want it to, but then also is modifying my font style to include a .25 left indention. I have four defined bullet styles and the formatting painter does this to all of them. Any idea what is causing this? Is this a setting?



Thank you!

If you select a whole paragraph, the Format Painter will pick up paragraph formatting (such as indents) as well. This is by design.

To more easily create bullet formatting, make use of styles. See http://shaunakelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Well, for example, I will adjust the parapgrah spacing of one bullet. Then I will use the format painter to adjust the spacing of the rest of the bullets in that section. When I do this, the rest of the bullets adjust the spacing as intended, but then also indents .25. Instead of creating a new font style with this modification, it makes the indention become part of my predefined style.

You can change the paragraph spacing on the Page Layout tab of the ribbon, and then use the Update <style name> to Match Selection in the Styles pane; rest the mouse pointer on the right of the style name and click the arrow to see the update (and other options).

To display the Styles pane quickly, you can press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

In addition, if you want to change the indentation for bulleted styles, click the actual list bullet to select all bullets of the list. Right-click and choose Adjust List Indents. This change should be automatically incorporated into the style (but you can use the Update... command anyway, just in case).

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

I was using the format painter because I only need to quickly modify the spacing of the bullets in one section of the document and not change all of them in the document. So I wouldnt want the style to be updated in my styles pane.

I do not want to change the indention of the bullets. This is just something the format painter is doing by itself. I was trying to figure out why the format painter was changing the indention when I was not asking it to.

If I click the format painter on the bullet, it indents the bullet, if I click the bullet again with the format painter, the indention goes back to normal.

Unexpected behavior with indentation in bulleted and numbered lists usually means that the indentation wasn't defined correctly to begin with. (The correct way is via Adjust Indents as I mentioned earlier in this thread.)

In this case, since you are changing paragraph spacing only for some paragraphs, you could add the spacing as direct formatting. Or perhaps you could create a separate bulleted style for the purpose.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

The indentions in my .dot were defined by just modifying the style in the style pane and not through the way described in the link you provided. So just to confirm, this is not a correct way to define bullets?

Here is the best way to define bullets in any document that will undergo much editing:

How to control bullets in Word 2007 and Word 2010

Thank you both for your help!

With numbered or bulleted styles the indentation must be defined via Adjust List Indents, yes. For single-level lists, the command opens a small dialog box; for multilevel lists, you'll see the multilevel dialog box (where you can access all aspects of multilevel/outline numbering).

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional