Hi there,



I am using Word 2013 and I have the following problem:

I have set up a nice,fresh .dotm with 6 custom styles that show up in the quick styles gallery. The .dotm is for my colleagues such that we have a new, custom design for our organization.

When my colleagues open the template to start working on a new document, they often paste text from older documents with outdated styles into the new document. If they do no use "paste as plain text", they end up with the outdated styles in the new document – and worse: with more than the desired 6 styles in the styles gallery. So they get confused about what to use and the new design cannot be properly implemented.

Therefore, I am looking for a way to set up my .dotm template in such a way that styles will never be copied with the text to that document.

I know I should just brainwash everybody and yell at them to only "paste as plain text". But the people here are pretty resistant, its a big organization and often images are copied and pasted as well.

So is there any option in word to not allow making changes to the quick styles gallery?

Thank you and best regards,
Paolo

I'll venture an answer here, since no one lese has, and see if someone has a correction to make.
You'll need to display the Developer Tab on the ribbon, if you haven't (Options/Customize Ribbon, and check the Developer box). In that tab you'll find Restrict editing. Open that pane and you'll find Limit formatting to a selection of styles.

That should work.
Remember to start enforcing the restriction.
Restrict Editing is also available on the Review Tab.

Thanks for your answers!

That is a option to achieve my goal, but it has a major disadvantage - at least when I played with it:

Limiting formatting to a selection of styles disables also the regular formatting options; i.e. no changes of the font, font color etc. will be allowed.

If I choose that approach people will hate the template and not use it.

Do you know if there is a way to restrict formatting to a number of styles but still allow for the regular formatting options?

No. You can give them a number of styles including some character styles that have color or Bold/Italic.

Lock down the stylesheet, give the users a style guide and persuade them that not having to waste time tinkering with layout means they can concentrate on content ;-} (well, I can dream …)

I meant that the font tab is greyed out ... I really like do not want to limit the user so much! It will only backfire.

Oh man, I can't believe I am such a unicorn with my use case. Seems naturally to me to not want to important other styles into a document when pasting while being able to paste blocks of text containing images (therefore "pasting as text only" is not an option) and while still allowing for manuall changes via the font tab.

So, you want to allow Comic Sans and Jokerman fonts, but not a Body Text Inset Quote style? I'm sorry, I do not know how to do this.

Put specialized building blocks, styles, keyboard shortcuts and QAT modifications into your template so that your users will really benefit from using your template.

You can add a wide variety of styles that they can use.

By the way, you are not dealing with Microsoft here, but with your fellow users. This is a peer-to-peer support forum not sponsored by Microsoft.

I know this is a user forum :-) Sorry if I came across rude or complaining. That was not my intention and I really appreciate the help offered here!

I do not want to set up any limitations to the users. They will not change the font, but they might change the font size and/or use bold/italic... I fear that any visible limitation (styles is not one of them) will just turn them off....

Thx for the tip about specialized building blocks. I have not really heard of them but it sounds like something very useful. I will look into that.