Styles misbehaving in Word 2007

[Adam]

Hi Everyone

I have a word macro which imports a plain text document and applies some
formatting to it. One of the things it does is applies styles to the text
based on html-like tags in the plain text file.

This worked fine in Word 2000. I've just upgraded to Word 2007, and strange
things happen. The text does not end up formatted in accordance with the
style definitions in the original document. Some styles get redefined (for
example, my Heading 8 style, previously in Times New Roman, gets changed to
Calibri) and other style definitions get ignored. I have a style called
"Plain Text" in the document, which has the font Lucida Sans Typewriter 9
point, but although that's still how the style is defined, all my Plain Text
is actually formatted as Courier New 10.5 point.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

Many thanks
Adam

 

[Tony Jollans]

By default both these styles (like most others) are based on Normal - and
Normal has changed in 2007. If you either change Normal or be explicit in
the other style definitions your problem should clear.

 

[Adam]

By default both these styles (like most others) are based on Normal - and
Normal has changed in 2007. If you either change Normal or be explicit in
the other style definitions your problem should clear.

Thanks for that. But the Normal style is explicitly defined in my document:
I'm not just relying on Word's default. And in fact the definition of the
Normal style isn't affected in my document, so I don't see how that can be
the explanation, unless I'm missing something.

Adam

 

[Tony Jollans]

In 2007, Themes have been superimposed on Styles. The default fonts for
Headings and Body text are now Theme Fonts - they refer to the Document
Theme and will change if the Theme is changed.

Plain Text now seems to use a Font of Consolas 10.5pt instead of the old
Courier 10pt - I didn't know anything about this till I looked after you
posted.

In both cases you need to check exactly what you have explicitly specified
and what has fallen back on (changed) defaults.

 

[Adam]

In 2007, Themes have been superimposed on Styles. The default fonts for
Headings and Body text are now Theme Fonts - they refer to the Document
Theme and will change if the Theme is changed.

Plain Text now seems to use a Font of Consolas 10.5pt instead of the old
Courier 10pt - I didn't know anything about this till I looked after you
posted.

In both cases you need to check exactly what you have explicitly specified
and what has fallen back on (changed) defaults.

Thanks! I guess I need to do a bit of rooting around in the help files
before I fully understand how Themes work, but from a 5-minute look at it,
it sounds like that is almost certainly what is causing the problems.

I'm just glad it's only a demo version of Office 2007. I've only been using
it for 3 days, and I'd like to give it a fair trial, but right now the idea
of uninstalling it and going back to my trusty Office 2000 seems pretty
attractive.

BW

Adam

 

[gr8auntieokie]

I suggest that you try opening your document with the customized styles in
it, and create and save a Quick Style set of those styles. Then when you
open the document that you're going to merge the Plain Text into, you can
click on the Quick Style set you want to use for that document before you do
the merge, and then your text should merge into the document with the
formatting you want.

I've found the Quick Styles gallery to be very handy for applying styles to
any document, without having to recreate the styles from scratch everytime I
want to use them. It's like using a template of styles, without having to
open a template to get to them.

Cyndie Browning
Tulsa, OK