Thank you for your response, Charles Kenyon.



I've managed to create a new document and get it to look and work exactly as I wanted, however, there are a few strange problems for which I've tried various adjustments without success.

The font size I specified in my styles was 12; everything looked correct. I want users of the document to be able to easily increase the font of the whole document, however, each time the font is increased (by selecting the whole document), the tab gap between the bullet and the start of the corresponding text visually reduces. This happens up to font size 16. At font size 18, things get even worse; the text of the third and fourth lines move further AWAY from their corresponding bullets than the indent set in the bullets style and at 20 font, the same happens to the text of the second line also. Removing the 'indents' in the bullets and numbering settings does not make any difference.

There are a few things in your posts which I have not understood and maybe one of those could be the culprit. See these below.

Space before formatting?

Do you mean first two choices?

Manually? I set the styles for the fourth line in the same way I did for the others.

How do I apply the styles to hundreds of items in a long document? I have searched the web but have only found info on how to copy styles from one document to the next and not how to APPLY the styles.

Any assistance with the above would be appreciated.

Thanks.

UPDATE: Changing the 'Follow number with' option from 'Tab character' to 'Nothing' fixed the problem of text moving closer to or away from the bullet, however, how do I get the space between the bullet and the text? Surely there is a more 'correct' method than to enter a few spaces after the bullet typed in the 'Number format' field? Thanks.

For anyone who experiences a similar problem to mine and comes across this post, unfortunately, I could not find a way to format my existing document by setting styles only. Using styles only worked fine before starting a new document but as mine already existed and was hundreds of pages long, this did not work for me, I didn't do it by any 'proper' way but got the job done via other methods, i.e. I created the styles for the four lines of text as partly described in this thread, however, instead of setting bullets, I used Find and Replace to add normal letters to use as my bullets and selected the relevant style for each line (within Find and Replace). To get the right space between my 'bullets' and text and have them all line up correctly, I reduced the default tab stop for the whole document and used a hanging indent. Hope this helps anyone looking for an answer to my original question:

Thanks.

I recommend the following link as well:
Basic Concepts of Microsoft Word by Shauna Kelly

This is a part of paragraph formatting. It is the space set between paragraphs, specifically, space before the current paragraph.

Format > Style > Modify > Format (button) > Paragraph

I mean each choice except the last one. So, question style is followed by answer style which is followed by answer style.

For the last item in the list you choose the "answer last" style, which is set to be followed by the question style.

You apply the styles by selecting the text to which the style is to be applied and then picking it in the style drop-down menu. Ctrl+Shift+S
You can assign keyboard shortcuts to styles.

Had you started using the styles from the beginning it would be automatic. You are paying the price of that.
For use after-the fact, you do not need the last answer style. That one is used to make things more automatic.

This is a completely separate topic and does not have to do with styles.

The space for the text after a number is a part of the tab settings. Word inserts a tab after the number which advances to the next tab set. If the character is wider, that tab setting may be the one after the one that would be used for a narrower character. Increasing the font size will increase the width of characters but will not change the tab settings.

The tab settings should be set as a part of the Style. However, the Indent set after a number should be set in the numbering dialog, not in the style or paragraph dialog.

Keep in mind that Word has changed in part in response to problems people had. Thus Word 95 became Word 97 which became Word 2000 which became Word 2002 which became Word 2003 which became Word 2007 which became Word 2010 which became Word 2013 which became Word 2016. I do not recommend change for the sake of change. However, I would recommend that you try to get at least Word 2003 as soon as possible. It is significantly better than Word 97.

Woody Leonhard wrote an entire book about Word 97 called "Word 97 Annoyances." If you are going to stick with Word 97, I recommend it.