In the course of tracking down some little gremlins in Word 2007 documents today, I have come to the "Preserve styles" box on the Autoformat tab. I don;t know if it is pertinent, because I can't find out what it does, beside Word Help's worthless description. I was led to it by discovering for the first time that the "Other paragraph styles" function above it on the tab, if checked, can nullify all the Advanced Copy and Paste settings one has scrupulously set. And I thought I understood all that! Well, live and learn.

Anyway, will someone please enlighten me with an adequate description of the "Preserve Styles" function, what it does and doesn't do, and any variables which may affect its behavior?

Much obliged.

Hi Ulodesk,

All the 'Preserve Styles' option does is to prevent paragraphs that have already been assigned the Normal or Body Text style being reformatted when you run the AutoFormat command.

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

Good morning, Paul. I'm always grateful for your generous assistance and expertise in this forum. Your answer this time, however, leaves me a little perplexed. I generally avoid Normal, at least in the proposal work, nearly all of which is based on custom templates. In any case, since Autoformat has to do with generating headlines, bullets, etc., in Normal text, my reading of your response suggests that the autoformatting would not do so.

To be clear: Most people are unaware of styles and simply type and format as best they can-- Normal by default. Autoformat prompts Word to turn certain typographic cues into list, headline, and other styles from Normal. Thus, I don't understand your saying that Preserve Styles prevents this when Autoformat is run.

I'm sure I'm just not understanding you properly.

Thanks,
Philip

Hi Philip,

If 'Preserve Styles' is enabled, Word doesn't replace Styles that you have applied in the document. Thus Normal and Body Text Styles (the two most commonly used by those who don't know how to use Styles) will be left alone. If it is not enabled then Word will apply Styles according to the paragraph length, content, formatting, etc.

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

Much obliged. Wouldn't it be nice if the folks at Microsoft were to offer such a simple and clear explanation.