I'm new with 2010, I used to work with MS Office 2003 and having trouble with Word 2010 paragraph spacing setup as default. I'm doing a lot of cut/paste from web pages, so in my document, I set the Paste default to plain text (except for paste from the same document, which I used Keep source formatting), this didn't work, so I tried to change the default in my style, and to my surprise, it was grayed out. How can I set a default in style in Word 2010?

Here's my environment:
- Windows 8.1 64 bits


- MS Office 2010 64 bits
- Lenovo G500 i3-3110M

When I opened up style window, I saw lot of styles in there, lot of them has (web) in it, I tried a few of them and all of them are grayed out.

1) How can I set/change the default if the Set as default option is grayed out?
2) How can I delete those "extra styles" in my style list?

In my document I have bullet list, and when I tried to modify a style, it removed most of the numbered bullets, where in the style can I set/keep the numbered bullet?

Thanks for your help/comment.
Michael

1. When you paste in plain text (Text only) format, the text takes on the formatting at the insertion point. In which way isn't this working for you? What do you expect to happen?

Also, which style default did you try to change? And which option, specifically, was greyed out?

2. In the Styles pane (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S), right-click the styles you want to get rid of and choose Delete from the context menu. Note that this only works with custom styles (built-in styles can't be permanently deleted).

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for your reply.
1. The text that I'm trying to insert has paragraph spacing before & after set to auto, but my doc has it default to 0, so every single time I inserted a text, I had to highlight the inserted paragraph and remove manually the spacing before and after.
2. Thanks for this tip. Is there anyway that I can tell Word NOT to insert styles from other docs/sources?
I've noticed that after few pastings, I had quite a few Normal (web) styles in my style list, and it keeps growing when I try to insert new texts from web pages.

ps: the way I'm inserting texts into my doc is this:
1. I highlight the text I'm interested in webpage
2. copy/paste into Notepad (which is supposed to remove all formatting from the text)
3. cut/paste into my doc, but still the style get through to my doc, it only removed bold/url references, etc. but not style!!! Is there any other way to do it easier? Is there an editor which REALLY removes ALL formatting?

Thanks for your suggestion/comment
Michael

1. This shouldn't happen if you are pasting in plain text format.

2. You can change the setting for "Pasting from other programs" to "Keep text only" in File tab | Options | Advanced (look under "Cut, copy, and paste").

But note that you will have to remove the undesired styles that have already been pasted into the document. Once the styles have been applied to text in your document, pasting text may give you undesired formatting of course.

If everything else fails, explicitly paste in plain text format via Home tab | Paste | Paste Special.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for your reply.
1. That's what I thought, but the weirdest thing is I just noticed that it seems to be working after I shut down Windows, it seems the change did not take effect immediately.
2. If it start to happen again, I'll clean up my style list as recommended (there are a bunch of styles created after pasting).
ps: do you know of any other free editor that won't transfer styles, it seems Notepad just remove hiperlink and text formatting (bold, italic, etc.) but not styles (paragraph spacings, etc.)?

Thanks again for your reply and recommendation.

The styles must be getting in the document via some other route than Notepad. AFAIK Notepad does not move styles. If the style is in the document and you paste from Notepad text will take on characteristics of the paragraph style it is pasted into.

NotePad is a text editor so it doesn't bring in any formatting. You can always clear direct font formatting by selecting the text and then pressing Ctrl+SpaceBar. Similarly, use Ctrl+Q to clear direct paragraph formatting. Only the settings in the paragraph style at the insertion point will be applied.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Which is what I said. michaelbr, the point being is that even if you use Notepad (or any other text editor), it is true that text coming from said editor will itself have no formatting, it WILL take on the paragraph characteristics of the paragraph it comes into. And ALL paragraphs in Word have paragraph settings.

I actually said it first (see my very first reply in this thread), if we are going to be picky. :-)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for your reply, this is what I did, please confirm if it's the correct procedure: </br>
- before insertion, I checked the formatting where is the cursor (by clicking Paragraph down arrow, a paragraph screen came up showing spacing before/after being 0. </br>
- I cut & paste a text from web into Notepad, cut/paste again into Word, and the inserted text has spacing before/after set to auto!! </br></br>

ps: I had Paste options set to paste only text except when it's from the same documents. So I guess I'm following all the correct rules, but it seems not working until you shut down the computer. </br>
Another thing that I don't understand is why after inserting text from Notepad, Word keeps adding styles (such as Normal (web) ....), if Notepad does not transfer styles, where those (web) styles came from? Please see the attached screen capture.

Attached Images

style.png (14.8 KB, 9 views)

Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a try next time I'm having this kind of problem.

Thanks to both of you, I'm learning few tricks that I did not know. Another unrelated question: where can I create my signature (I did not find it in my profile) and why everytime I pressed Enter key, the line break is not inserted, I had to enter </br> manually in every line break.

Oooops. My apologies. I was not trying to be picky.

You won't be allowed to create a signature here until you have posted at least ten messages. See https://www.msofficeforums.com/faq.p...#faq_signature.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

I didn't think you were. (Notice the smiley in my reply.)
:-)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional