Hi all,

I made a template in Word with built in styles and headers/footers etc. and it is locked down so that users can only use the permitted styles. There are various teething problems with it - one of them being if you highlight a single word in a paragraph and style it 'bold', the whole paragraph goes 'bold'. If I unlock it and do the same thing, only the highlight word goes 'bold'. The same thing happens with italics, underline and highlighting.

Any suggestions out there?

Sounds like a paragraph style is being applied (in a protected document you can't "paint" a paragraph style to part of a paragraph). You will have to make sure that the template includes character styles which apply bold, italics, underline, and so on.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for the response. I have done this but it doesn't appear to be working and the option of applying the formatting only to the characters is no longer available..

What exactly isn't working? The character styles that you create must be included with the allowed styles.

Also, note that adding these styles to the template doesn't affect any existing documents already created from the template. You will have to modify the documents separately.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

So if I create a new style (bodt text -Bold), it does not give me the option of character style, only paragraph style or linked style. If I use the linked style, once the template is locked, I am unable to create a single bold word in a paragraph.

You can't change the type of a style once it has been created. (The exception is that you can switch from "Paragraph" to "Linked.")

Create an entirely new style using the New Style button in the Styles pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S); be sure to choose the "Character" type.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks a lot for your help, this works now.

You are welcome.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional