Ignoring commands

W

wordspinster

Hello All,

I don't have any idea how to search for this one, so apologies if the
question has been posed. I am currently using 2007 on XP, but this has
occurred since 2.0, I think.

Occasionally, Word ignores me. In this particular case, I have selected text
to format. The Style pane tells me that Strong style is applied to the text.
I then selected the Heading 1 style to be applied to that text. There is no
change to the text. No error message. The style pane still tells me that
Strong is applied to the text.

FWIW, Heading 1 is a linked style type and Strong is a Character type.

Can anybody help with this one? Many, many thanks in advance.

janet
 
J

Jay Freedman

Hello All,

I don't have any idea how to search for this one, so apologies if the
question has been posed. I am currently using 2007 on XP, but this has
occurred since 2.0, I think.

Occasionally, Word ignores me. In this particular case, I have selected text
to format. The Style pane tells me that Strong style is applied to the text.
I then selected the Heading 1 style to be applied to that text. There is no
change to the text. No error message. The style pane still tells me that
Strong is applied to the text.

FWIW, Heading 1 is a linked style type and Strong is a Character type.

Can anybody help with this one? Many, many thanks in advance.

janet
Click to expand...

Word really isn't ignoring you -- at least, not in this case. :)

Any paragraph has a particular paragraph style. It (or some part of it) _may_
also have a character style, whose formatting is "layered on top of" the
paragraph style's formatting.

When you changed the paragraph style from (probably) Normal to Heading 1, that
didn't change the fact that the Strong character style is still applied to it.

The Styles pane is only able to show one style at a time, and the designer's
choice -- with which you can argue if you like -- was to show the current
character style if there is one, or the paragraph style if not.

If you want to see the entire situation in one place, click the Style Inspector
button at the bottom of the Styles pane.

You can get rid of the Strong character style (which consists only of adding
Bold format to whatever the current paragraph style supplies) by selecting the
text and pressing Alt+spacebar (the shortcut for the ResetChar command), or by
opening the Style Inspector and clicking the Clear Character Style button in the
"Text level formatting" section.

However, these actions are not quite equivalent, if any direct formatting is
applied to the selected text. For example, let's say you have a paragraph with
both Heading 1 and Strong applied to it, and one word also has italic formatting
applied directly with the Ctrl+I shortcut. Then

- Alt+spacebar will remove the Strong style _and_ the italics

- Clear Character Style will remove the Strong style but leave the italics

The latter is an improvement over previous versions, in which Alt+spacebar was
the only choice available.
 
L

Lene Fredborg

....I think Alt+spacebar should be Ctrl+spacebar...

--
Regards
Lene Fredborg
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word
 
W

wordspinster

Thank you so much for that explanation. I'm printing this one to jog my
memory the next time Word ignores me. Can you (or anybody else) recommend a
good book wherein I could learn about these more obscure features?

janet
 
J

Jay Freedman

Of course you're right. (Brain, meet fingers... ;-) Alt+spacebar opens the
"command menu", same as clicking the application icon in the upper left corner.
 
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