Word 2002, copying styles between documents

[Jonathan Sachs]

This is not really a "long documents" question, but I can't find
another newsgroup better suited to it.

In Word 2000 and earlier versions, I made regular use of a feature
which allow me to copy styles back and forth between documents. I
think it was called "Style Gallery." In Word 2002 the style interface
has been completely redone, and I can't find this feature anywhere.
What became of it?

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can use the Organizer to copy styles. See Tools | Templates and Add-ins:
Organizer...

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Tools => Templates and Add-Ins... => Organizer (button) => Styles (tab)

After you select the styles to be copied, press the Copy button three times
and OK overwriting existing styles.
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory:
<URL: http://addbalance.com/word/index.htm>

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide)
<URL: http://addbalance.com/usersguide/index.htm>

See also the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
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[Joan]

It's now hidden in Tools, Templates and Add Ins,
Organzier.

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

It's now hidden in Tools, Templates and Add Ins,
Organzier.

Got it.

I wish Uncle Bill would stop rearranging things from release to
release.

The Windows application market is mature enough that existing users
outnumber new ones at any given time. Therefore most changes are
liable to confuse more people that they help, even if they are genuine
improvements.

(And this one just baffles me. When I copy a rarely needed style from
one document to another document, what does that have to do with
Templates and Add-Ins?)

Are in listening, Microsoft?

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Jonathan,

Got it.

I wish Uncle Bill would stop rearranging things from release to
release.

Actually, just to be fair to the Word team , "Organizer" has
been available through this "path" since Word 95 or so.

There have traditionally been multiple ways to get to the
Organizer, you just happened to be using one that got relegated
to the "out-dated" heap in Word 2002. But the command is still
there, and you can bring it out of oblivion and back onto a
menu/toolbar.

Tools/Customize/COmmands. Category: Format. You'll find "Style
Gallery" down towards the end of the list. Just drag it to where
you'd like to have it

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30
2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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[Jonathan Sachs]

...you can bring it out of oblivion and back onto a
menu/toolbar.

I don't need it often enough to justify that; not having it at all
when I needed it was just monstrously inconvenient.

I suppose this is just a side effect of the way they reorganized the
whole style management interface. I'm glad that it's no longer easy to
copy one-off format changes back to a style definition by accident,
but the new interface is so awkward in so many ways that it seems, at
best, a wash.

I wonder, is there any way to make Word STOP including every one-off
variation on every style in the drop-down style list? By careful
pruning, I, used to be able to make all of my styles fit in the list
with little or no scrolling. Now there is no hope. Merely finding the
one I want amid all the clutter can be a challenge.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I wonder, is there any way to make Word STOP including every one-off

variation on every style in the drop-down style list? By careful
pruning, I, used to be able to make all of my styles fit in the list
with little or no scrolling. Now there is no hope. Merely finding the
one I want amid all the clutter can be a challenge.

Yes, just clear the check box for "Keep track of formatting" on the Edit tab
of Tools | Options.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

Yes, just clear the check box for "Keep track of formatting" on the Edit tab
of Tools | Options.

Thanks!!! You've just made the outlining by must do to study for
finals considerably easier.

Are there any documents that assemble this type of information in
accessible form? The Office help feature is usually worthless for
this, since I don't know what topics to search for until I solve the
problem.

(In this case I would have searched for the topic "style." One of the
dozen or so topics under "style" contains the information I needed,
but it is so vaguely worded that I probably would not have realized it
was the answer to my question if I had read it.)

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The only way I know of to pick these things up is to constantly explore and
experiment with Word's menus and dialogs and to read these NGs regularly.
There is, however, a lot of useful information, both basic and abstruse,
collected at www.mvps.org/word.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

You can use the Organizer to copy styles. See Tools | Templates and Add-ins:
Organizer...

I have discovered something odd about this procedure: although it
works, it consistently copies some style properties incorrectly.

I have a paragraph style named Bullet which has the following
properties:

Left indent: 0.125"
Right indent: 0.0"
Hanging: 0.25"
Space before: 6 pt
Space after: 0 pt
Line spacing: at least 13 pt
Tabs: 0.375"
Bullets & numbering: standard bulleted style

When I copy this style from one document to another, it always arrives
with the following attributes changed:

Left indent: 0.375"
Tabs: 0.625"

The destination document has a pre-existing definition of Bullet which
it inherits from the template, but that style's left indent is
different from either of the values above (it is 1.125"), and it has
no tabs or bullets and numbering defined at all. Also, I can delete
the pre-existing style definition from the destination document before
I copy and I get exactly the same result.

Do you have any idea what is going on here? I can't swear that Word
2000 did not do this, but I used it for a couple of years, and I never
noticed such a problem.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Jonathan

There seem to be bugs in the way the Organizer works for styles that are
numbered or bulleted. For further information see
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/MacrosVBA/UpdateStyles.htm. It recommends
doing the process two or three times. I've certainly seen reproducible
cases in coding macros when it was necessary to do it three times to get
a stable result.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
Melbourne, Australia

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

There seem to be bugs in the way the Organizer works for styles that
are

numbered or bulleted. For further information see
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/MacrosVBA/UpdateStyles.htm. It recommends
doing the process two or three times. I've certainly seen reproducible
cases in coding macros when it was necessary to do it three times to get
a stable result.

I looked at the article, but did not find it too helpful; it speaks
only of "updating" styles from templates, which implies that (1)
styles are being copied from a template, not a document, and (2) they
already exist in the target document. In my case the first is not
true, and the second is not necessarily true. Also, the article speaks
of a bug in copying "numbering styles," while I'm losing bullet styles
(probably the same thing), but also indents and tabs. It's not clear
to me whether this article relates to my problem partially,
completely, or not at all.

I tried copying the styles multiple times, and the one that were
copied incorrectly got copied differently, but still not right. (The
left indent which should have been at 0.125 shifted from 0.375 to
0.0; the tab which should have been at 0.375 shifted from 0.625 to
0.25; and the hanging indent disappeared completely.)

I guess this just flat-out won't work. I hope they get it right in the
next release!

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.