Master style document ?

[Bo Rasmussen]

Hi,

Is it possible to have one master style template which defines fonts,
headings and other general stuff, which other templates may refer to? I know
it is possible to copy styles from e.g. normal.dot to another template, but
I wan't to define the font we're using in one template, and the rest of my
templates will automatically use this font.

We're using Word '97

Regards
Bo Rasmussen

 

[Charles Kenyon]

It is possible, not easy. There is no way built into Word. There is no way I
know of that can't be easily (and accidentally) circumvented if someone is
not using document templates.

General suggestion is to create a series of easy to use and useful custom
templates that have the styles you want. Discourage your users from using
blank documents for anything except scratch paper. I have the base style in
my normal.dot template set as Body Text. That way, anything copied and
pasted from a scratch document will be formatted in the Body Text style of
the receiving document.

Otherwise, see http://addbalance.com/word/stylesheet.htm.

 

[Bo Rasmussen]

Hi Charles,

Thanks a lot - the macro is exactly what I need ;o) Actually I wnat this
macro to be called everytime a document is opened, to make sure that the
most recent styles are included in existing documents. Is that good practice
?

On the addbalance site, I saw a macro which updates all fields in the
document. It fails however to update fields in the header ( the same problem
occurs when using the ActiveDocument.Fields.Update command) do you know how
to fix that problem ?

Regards
Bo Rasmussen

 

[Charles Kenyon]

The following may help. I found it in my code snippets.

Sub FieldUpdater()
' Macro to update fields in document other than Ask and Fill-In fields
' Written 19 March 2004 by Charles Kyle Kenyon
' with suggestions from Graham Mayor and Suzanne Barnhill
Dim bUpdate As Boolean
bUpdate = Options.UpdateFieldsAtPrint
Options.UpdateFieldsAtPrint = True
ActiveDocument.PrintPreview
ActiveDocument.ClosePrintPreview
Options.UpdateFieldsAtPrint = bUpdate
End Sub

Adding:
ActiveDocument.Fields.Update
should catch all fields in the document body itself

Otherwise, the following updates Ref fields in all stories. You could take
out the test for the field type to have it apply to all fields.

Sub RefFieldUpdateAllStory()
' Written by Charles Kyle Kenyon 15 November 2001
' All Story Field Updater - Ref fields
Dim oField As Field
Dim oStory As Range
On Error Resume Next
For Each oStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
' This goes into headers and footers as well as the regular document
For Each oField In ActiveDocument.Range.Fields
'If oField.Type = wdFieldRef Then
oField.Update
'End If
Next oField
Next oStory
End Sub

(I think the second macro will take longer because it cycles through the
stories and the fields collection.)

I know that I would not want a macro jerking the styles that I changed in a
document back to some standard, but you may live with different needs than I
do. (I would quickly get around such a macro by creating different styles to
use.) Take a look at the vba FAQ page on the MVP FAQ site for the article on
pseudo auto macros. It gives a way to put a macro that will run everytime a
document is opened into a global template.

 

[Bo Rasmussen]

Hi Charles,

Thanks again for your help - and your website.

I'm however a bit confused on the subject of global templates (I've read the
Template Basics in Microsoft Word). Naturally we have some common styles and
macros that we wish to share. As far as I understand normal.dot should not
be shared! So it's pretty easy to store macros in some other global
template. But styles are worse as normal.dot takes precedence (as I guess
is alright if some user wants to add their own little tweak - but on the
other hand we want them to adhere to company standards )

So is the best practice to use normal.dot (for maintenance this is
preferable), or to copy styles from another global template to specific
document templates?

Regards
Bo Rasmussen

 

[Charles Kenyon]

The best practice is to not use normal.dot for standardizing anything.

My first post answers the rest of your questions, I think.