Use Destination Styles/Copying Styles

[Dale]

Hi, I’m using Word 2007 and I have what is probably a very basic question
about copying styles and/or text from one document to another. What I need
to do is copy text from one Word document into a new document shell. Both
documents have some style names in common, but the formatting of those styles
is different. I want the text from the source document to take on the style
formatting of the destination document. I have “Use Destination Styles†as
the option in the Word options section where it says “Pasting between
documents when style definitions conflictâ€, but the styles still retain the
formatting of the source document and the definition of the style in the
destination document is automatically modified to be like the style with the
same name in the source document. Some experimentation seems to indicate
that it will only match the destination styles’ formatting if that style has
already been used in the destination document prior to the copy and pasting.

So, then I thought I would try a different approach and just copy the styles
from the template that the new document is based on. The problem with that
is that once again it seems that you have to actually have used the styles in
the template before they will appear in the “Copy from†list in the Organizer.

I’m just not sure of the best way to accomplish any of this right now. It
seems like it should be a simple thing. I feel like I must be missing
something really obvious or some option that has to be checked somewhere.
Can anyone help? Thanks in advance for any information.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Dale,

Something you can try (although it might not be satisfactory if any numbering is
involved) would be to set the destination document to "Automatically update
document styles". This tells the document when it opens to check the style
definitions in the attached template and overwrite any that have changed. This
option is found in the Templates dialog box (the Developer tab of the Ribbon).

Hi, I’m using Word 2007 and I have what is probably a very basic question
about copying styles and/or text from one document to another. What I need
to do is copy text from one Word document into a new document shell. Both
documents have some style names in common, but the formatting of those styles
is different. I want the text from the source document to take on the style
formatting of the destination document. I have “Use Destination Styles†as
the option in the Word options section where it says “Pasting between
documents when style definitions conflictâ€, but the styles still retain the
formatting of the source document and the definition of the style in the
destination document is automatically modified to be like the style with the
same name in the source document. Some experimentation seems to indicate
that it will only match the destination styles’ formatting if that style has
already been used in the destination document prior to the copy and pasting.

So, then I thought I would try a different approach and just copy the styles
from the template that the new document is based on. The problem with that
is that once again it seems that you have to actually have used the styles in
the template before they will appear in the “Copy from†list in the Organizer.

I’m just not sure of the best way to accomplish any of this right now. It
seems like it should be a simple thing. I feel like I must be missing
something really obvious or some option that has to be checked somewhere.
Can anyone help? Thanks in advance for any information.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in
the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Dale]

Hi, Cindy, thanks for your post. I tried using automatically update styles
but it seems that it only works with styles that have been used in some way,
either modified or applied to text. I guess I could go through and modify
every style so Word would consider it to be in use or already used. I
managed to do this with a very basic macro that goes through all the styles
and modifies them and then changes them back, but I'm very new to VBA and I'm
not sure it's a good idea to do it that way. I'm afraid it might have other
effects that might not be apparent right away.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Dale,

I tried using automatically update styles
but it seems that it only works with styles that have been used in some way,
either modified or applied to text. I guess I could go through and modify
every style so Word would consider it to be in use or already used. I
managed to do this with a very basic macro that goes through all the styles
and modifies them and then changes them back, but I'm very new to VBA and I'm
not sure it's a good idea to do it that way. I'm afraid it might have other
effects that might not be apparent right away.

In that case you might want to go to the word.vba.general (Word.programming)
newsgroup. The folks there can better advise you as to drawbacks to this method.

In earlier versions, doing something like that would force the styles to show in
the task pane. But in 2007 you can regulate the visibility, so that shouldn't be
an issue. I don't know of any other problems...

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Dale]

Hi, Cindy, thanks for your reply. I probably will post a question about
using a macro to do this in the programming newsgroups. I vaguely remember
hearing something about having to be careful when doing anything at all to
the list styles because of a build up of list templates. Maybe I'm mistaken
about this. It's been quite a while since I read it.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?RGFsZQ==?=,

I vaguely remember
hearing something about having to be careful when doing anything at all to
the list styles because of a build up of list templates.

At some point (an SP for Word 2000 or 2002, can't remember exactly) Microsoft
introduced functionality in Word to remove unused (orphaned) list templates
when the number reaches critical mass. So that part isn't as bad as it once
was.

But I agree, it would make a big difference to get assistance from people
with experience in this area.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Dale]

Hi, thanks for the information about list templates. That's good to know.