Windows 7 + Office 2007

I am editing someone else's document. Mine will be the final edit. The document makes extensive use of outline. There is no consistency throughout the document regarding outline left start indenture and format (hierarchical numbering/lettering). I tried selecting the entire document so that I could then (after the fact) enforce some particular outline style throughout but couldn't find where that command was located?

Mark

Hi Mark,

You can't really do what you're proposing in the way you're proposing to do it.

What you really need to do is to define a series of paragraph Styles, with a consistent layout and numbering scheme and apply these to the various paragraphs throughout the document.

You could have a series of Styles named, for example, Bullet1, Bullet2, etc, for bulleted paragraphs, where the number indicates the indenting level. Likewise for Indent1, Indent2 etc for ordinary indents, List1, List2 etc for indented list-numbered paragraphs, and so on. The Style definitions for the '2' levels would simply be the definitions for the '1' levels with some extra indenting (and, perhaps, a change in the number or bullet format where applicable). Once you've created such a set of Styles, applying them to the appropriate paragraphs is straight-forward and, if you later decide that you want to change the appearance of all paragraphs with, say, the 'Indent' Styles, you'd simply change the Style definition rather than going through each paragraph as you now have to do.

For more information on Styles, see:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/applyastyle.html
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styl...escascade.html

For many helpful hints, take a look at:
http://word.mvps.org/index.html

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Office '07

I'm trying to follow your first link's direction to 'modify' a style using the by example method 2. My intent is to tell an existing style to mimic the 'entire' style of the current paragraph (although I have set the cursor in between words as directed, one would think that I should select the entire paragraph or group of paragraphs that I want the style to mimic?). However, I cannot find the modify style dialogue box anywhere within the styles drop down box (clicking on the tiny box at the lower right of the styles ribbon area). The link directions seem to be for a version prior to ribbons (and weren't those nice!) since it says 'Tools > Options > Edit > Prompt to Update Style'?

The reason I wish to modify by what I have in my document is that the more I read styles the less I like the thing and find it totally confusing <argh>!

Hi Mark,

In Word 07, You can modify and existing Style or create a new one via Home|Change Styles. If you scroll up/down the Styles list, you should the the current Style highlighted. Right-click on that to modify (actually, you can also modify by simply right-clicking on the current paragraph), or you can select a different Style from the list. To create a new Style, click on the 'New Style' button (bottom right of the 'Change Styles' box).

To give you an idea of what you can do with paragraph Styles, see the attached. Mastering them is well worth the effort. I have found that adding the Styles panel to the QAT makes switching Styles as I work with a document quite easy.

Attached Files

Demo.docx (20.4 KB, 12 views)

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]