How to change a Heading style to match an existing paragraph?

[Sesquipedalian Sam]

I have a number of documents that were created using no Heading
styles. They are all Normal, but with different formatting including
fonts, spacing, highlighting, numbering, and indentation.

I would like to assign the existing formatting to the various Heading
styles. I am having trouble doing that.

I know that I can change a paragraph that is already a Heading 1 style
and then right-click and choose Style | Update Heading 1 style to
match selection.

But I cannot figure out how to convert a Normal paragraph to the
Heading 1 style and retain the current formatting.

Is there a way to do that?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It's actually incredibly simple (though I would never have discovered it if
Terry Farrell hadn't pointed it out). Select your formatted Normal paragraph
in the document. In the Styles and Formatting task pane, locate Heading 1
(or whatever), click the dropdown arrow, and choose "Update to Match
Selection." This actually does exactly what it says and updates Heading 1 to
the formatting of the selected text.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Sesquipedalian Sam]

It's actually incredibly simple (though I would never have discovered it if
Terry Farrell hadn't pointed it out). Select your formatted Normal paragraph
in the document. In the Styles and Formatting task pane, locate Heading 1
(or whatever), click the dropdown arrow, and choose "Update to Match
Selection." This actually does exactly what it says and updates Heading 1 to
the formatting of the selected text.

Excellent. I was close a couple of times, but never got it quite
right.

Thanks so much.


PS: I think you missed a step (#4 below). It should be:

1. Select the formatted paragraph to be assigfned to the style.
2. Open the Styles pane (ACS-S).
3. Locate the style to be updated. (Use scroll bars only.)
4. Right-click the style.
5. Select "Update xxx to Match Selection". (Alt-a) ("xxx" is the name
of the style to be uodated.)


PPS: One little quirk. One of the reasons I wanted this is that the
document in question has a multi-level numbering style for the
headings:

A. Head 1
A.1. Head 2
A.2. Head 2
A.2.a. Head 3
B. Head 1
B.1. Head 2

I selected the first line and assigned that to Heading 1. The "A."
changed to "B.". I had to right-click the numbering field and select
"Restart at A", but then all is well.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Right-clicking and clicking the dropdown arrow accomplish the same thing.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Sesquipedalian Sam]

Right-clicking and clicking the dropdown arrow accomplish the same thing.

When I posted that, I didn't see any drop-down arrow. I see now that I
have to hover over the style and it appears.

Again, thanks for the tip.