On 6/21/12, I posted a question with the above title and received expert advice that solved it. But now I'm facing a different problem and haven't been able to find a solution.



This question refers to Word 2011 on a MacBook Pro running OS 10.8.5. (The previous was Word 2008 and OS 10.6.8. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.)

When I open the Styles drop-down menu on a new document, the list is populated with a large number of styles I have never used and never will. Shadings and accents and grids with dark, medium and light options, for example. Navigating to the styles I want, which I do frequently with documents, takes unnecessarily long.

When I look at Format>Styles, the list shows "Styles in Use," and it includes only the styles I expect to see and want to use. None of the styles I want to remove from the new document list are shown, so I can't use the Organizer to delete the unwanted styles and customize the list to be user-friendly.

The drop-down menus in my documents that aren't new do not have all the extra styles, and they display only the ones I want.

Word 2011 also has a Styles area in the ribbon, which even on a new document does not show all the extra styles, just the ones I want.

I prefer the drop-down menu for navigating to change styles, and am wondering if there is any way to customize that menu on new documents so it appears the way it does on older documents. I don't understand what the difference is and would like to be able to control it rather than accept Word's default style presentation in the drop-down menu as my only choice.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

Tosh

The Manage Styles dialog box lets you choose which paragraph and character styles you want to show and which you want to hide. However, this doesn't apply to table styles, for which you have to make use of macros. For more on this, see http://shaunakelly.com/word/styles/h...s-in-word.html. Unfortunately, I don't know if this is going to work in MacWord.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thank you, Stefan:

The confusing part of this is why I can do exactly what I want on some documents and can't on new, blank documents. Especially when I select "Styles in use" and I still have a long list of styles I'm not using and have no intention of doing so.

It remains a mystery at the moment, but I appreciate your taking the time to post a reply.

Tosh

The "In use" setting includes styles that have been, at some point, been applied to text in a document (or its template), even if they are not applied now. It's better to specify which specific styles should be shown or hidden in the Manage Styles dialog box.

For what it's worth, you can get rid of "In use" styles which aren't actually present in a document as follows: In the affected document, press Enter to add an extra paragraph mark (¶) to the document. Select all content, except for that extra paragraph mark, and copy it to a new, blank document.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks again.

Word 2011 does not offer a "Manage Styles" dialog box, or at least I've never found it. Reference older documents that I've been working with for awhile, when I click "Format" > "Style..." I get a list that allows me to select "Styles in Use", "All Styles", and "User-Defined Styles. The "All Styles" selection is the only one that lists all the extra ones. So by not selecting it, I get a much pared-down list. In the bottom right corner is a button labeled "Organizer". It brings up a list with two choices: the document I have open and active at the time, or "Normal (global template). Using the organizer, I can delete unwanted styles from that document, and I've done that on many occasions, except for "Built-In Styles" that can't be deleted.

In these documents, the very long list is not shown in the drop-down menu in the upper left corner of the formatting toolbar. It's pared down and easy to use.

This may be a difference between Word 2008 and 2011, but when I open a new document, the default style list in the formatting toolbar has all styles and is very long and hard to navigate in. Nothing I've tried allows me to pare this styles list down because once the Organizer window is open, I can't get to the All Styles list to remove from the document those styles I have no intention of using.

I tried your "for what it's worth" suggestion, and that didn't work, because any new blank document comes pre-loaded with every style and there's no way to remove them from that menu.

And yet I have documents that only have Styles in Use in that menu. I would like to create new documents just like that and I can't.

I think the only option is to use one of the documents I have with the styles I want and create a stationary pad rather than open a new document.

Again, I appreciate your efforts to help.

Clearly, we need the expertise of someone who knows MacWord very well. Consider asking in the MacWord forum of the Microsoft Community: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/m...sc&tab=Threads.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

A BIG correction by the OP!

Word 2011 does offer a "Manage Styles Used In the Document" icon in the formatting toolbar. I felt like a dummy when I finally found it. It doesn't answer my original question about whether there is a way to customize the styles offered in the drop-down style menu on a new document, but it's another way to apply the styles in use.

It does appear that the only way to modify a style is to use "Format" > "Style..." > "Modify", which doesn't require hunting around for the style in a long list if the style I want to modify is currently selected.

It's all Microsoft's fault. They keep changing things . . .

Thanks especially for this link, Stefan. I did not know about this forum.

OK, thanks for the clarification.

Microsoft certainly moves options and commands around, which is annoying, but at least MacWord still has menus. :-)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional