Word 2007 style editing and corruption

[Kay H]

I’ve been working with Word styles for years and have never had this sort of
problem before. I have the usual “helpful features†(Preserve Styles, Define
Styles based on your Formatting, Keep Track of Formatting) turned off. We
generally save our documents in compatibility mode (.doc) rather than .docx
because our clients need to be able to access them easily. Therefore we do
not use Word’s theme-based style sets at all. We've had Office 2007 for about
15 months and have had none of these problems until recently. Here’s what’s
been happening lately:

1. Paragraph styles in my documents sometimes acquire attributes from other
styles in that document. Example: hanging indents of up to 1†creep into many
text styles in a document. None of these styles are linked to Normal or to
each other, but Normal frequently changes itself to look something like
Heading 1: large hanging indent, large space before and after. Often when I
open an existing document to edit it, after a few minutes of working on it
the styles will suddenly corrupt (sometimes I actually see it happen),
acquiring those large hanging indents and space before.

2. On other occasions several styles acquire attributes of the default
Normal definition in Word 2007 (10 pts space after, line spacing 1.15) which
I long ago changed in the Normal style in my Normal.dotx. Again, the
corrupting styles are not linked to Normal or to each other and should not be
going anywhere!

3. Today I was modifying headers and other styles in a document (beginning
the process of developing a new style set for a new template) and after I had
finished modifying one style and went to another style, the second style had
taken on the attributes of the style I had just modified. This happened
several times in just a few minutes, and it happened to styles that were not
linked to each other. Eventually the document crashed big-time on me.

No one else in my office is reporting style problems, and they would
complain to me if they did, since developing styles and templates is part of
my job. We all work on the same Word docs based on our company’s templates.
What is going on here?

 

[Terry Farrell]

I've never seen this either so I suspect possibly something as simple as
your temp folder is full of abandoned temp files. If you are using Vista,
this temp folder should be somewhere in your Local profile. Don't forget
that if you are creating a new template from a document that is still
attached to another template, the original template needs to be Read Only
and you should really start off the process by saving the document as a new
template before doing any complex style edits.

The reason that paragraphs revert to the default normal style is that Word
is unable to resolve what is being formatted and there is a conflict. The 10
pts space and 1.15 lines is an inbuilt programmed default: Word will use
this when it doesn't understand what the user is trying to assign (i.e. it
is getting confliction information).

 

[Kay H]

I removed the temp files (not sure this is the problem; this computer was new
in February). I have XP, not Vista, and these events have all taken place
while I was working in a .doc, not in a template, and not necessarily when I
was modifying styles. It has happened in documents based on different
templates.

It occurred to me this morning to delete the three custom QuickStyles I had
created some time ago, but almost never use. I find it unfortunate that
Microsoft has gone overboard in Word 2007 to make styles and formatting
"easy" for casual users, and in the process seems to have made it much more
difficult to manage styles in a corporate environment.

I still need help on this issue.

Kay

 

[Terry Farrell]

I agree completely. Dumbed down at the expense of power users.

Terry

 

[Pamelia Caswell via OfficeKB.com]

I used to often see things like items 1 and 3 while editing W2003 documents.
Almost very time, multiple unlinked styles ( char char char, etc.) were
present in my document. Char styles are not likely to be made in W2007
(because of the changed pasting behavior), but if the documents originated in
W2003 or are going back and forth between W2007 and W2003, they may be there.
They may not show up in the styles pane, even when "all styles" are displayed
(because it does not display hidden styles). Look for them in manage styles
or the organizer.

Delete them --after making sure they are based on normal-- but know that you
may damage styles and numbered lists in the process. So run open and repair,
and after saving the repaired file, fix any styles or list problems that
remain. (Styles settings may have changed and lists may be without bullets
and such. Most of the time I find no problems after running open and repair
and those that are there have been minor. Still, make sure you can retreat
to a previous version.) Do this to the template and all files based on the
template--or at least those that are misbehaving. As part of my "prevention
program", I delete unused user-defined styles and remove unused built-in
styles from the document or template. That way when a char style is created
(back in W2003), there are fewer styles for it to become entangled with.

Your item 2 may be happening because the document defaults have not been
changed to match what you've set in the normal style. That can happen for
styles based on no style (in other words, on document defaults).

HTH,
Pam

 

[Kay H]

Thanks for your suggestions, Pam. Much to think about.

I have done my fair share of searching for char styles in Word 2003, and I
did suspect that some of these problems were happening because we tend to
keep documents in .doc format. I try to keep the number of styles under
control by doing this and by using Manage Styles. But I wonder if there is
some toxic interaction with a heavily managed style list and .doc format. I
am the only person who uses Manage Styles, and I'm also the only one having
problems, so... maybe it's all me.

I'm wondering if the "style slippage" issue would be helped by defining a
unique, user-defined and named base style for each template/style set on
which I would base the other styles, rather than using Normal or "no style"
(which is what I usually do). I will continue to experiment.

Kay

 

[Terry Farrell]

The propagation of char char styles is caused by applying paragraph
formatting to a paragraph without selecting the paragraph mark (or selecting
just part of a paragraph and applying a paragraph style). Most users don't
like (won't) to display the non-printing characters whilst the edit
documents, which is why it happens. But when I worked for my last company, I
at least managed to persuade the users to select the entire paragraph by
triple-clicking (yes, most of them were mouse-centric). You can sort of
eliminate them by turning off the Keep Track of Formatting option, but it
doesn't really stop the char char styles: it just stops Word from displaying
them. Once you've got them, they are hell to sort out!

Terry

 

[Stefan Blom]

"Disable Linked Styles" (on the Styles pane) should also be helpful.

 

[Pamelia Caswell via OfficeKB.com]

Yes this would be helpful because, although linked styles don't break in
W2007, upon transfer to W2003, they will break and will not repair when the
file is returned to W2007.

Pam

"Disable Linked Styles" (on the Styles pane) should also be helpful.

The propagation of char char styles is caused by applying paragraph
formatting to a paragraph without selecting the paragraph mark (or

[quoted text clipped - 130 lines]

 

[Pamelia Caswell via OfficeKB.com]

Although what you suggest is often done, setting the document defaults works
too. I see "style slippage" often in my clients' W2007 documents. Once I
fix the document defaults and normal, most documents behave. The ones that
don't have other things wrong with them.

BTW, I recall that you say you're not using themes and style sets, but you
might want to take a look at style sets. The styles gallery showing your
style set is a great replacement for a W2003 user-made styles toolbar.

Pam

Thanks for your suggestions, Pam. Much to think about.

I have done my fair share of searching for char styles in Word 2003, and I
did suspect that some of these problems were happening because we tend to
keep documents in .doc format. I try to keep the number of styles under
control by doing this and by using Manage Styles. But I wonder if there is
some toxic interaction with a heavily managed style list and .doc format. I
am the only person who uses Manage Styles, and I'm also the only one having
problems, so... maybe it's all me.

I'm wondering if the "style slippage" issue would be helped by defining a
unique, user-defined and named base style for each template/style set on
which I would base the other styles, rather than using Normal or "no style"
(which is what I usually do). I will continue to experiment.

Kay

I used to often see things like items 1 and 3 while editing W2003 documents.
Almost very time, multiple unlinked styles ( char char char, etc.) were

[quoted text clipped - 59 lines]

 

[Stefan Blom]

But I suspect that Word 2007, in part, is better at *hiding* the problem
than actually fixing it. Although I don't use linked styles, I still have a
few "Char" styles in normal.dotm. I can see them listed among the "behaving"
styles, if I click Format, Style in the Find and Replace dialog box. <sigh>

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Yes this would be helpful because, although linked styles don't break in
W2007, upon transfer to W2003, they will break and will not repair when
the
file is returned to W2007.

Pam

"Disable Linked Styles" (on the Styles pane) should also be helpful.

The propagation of char char styles is caused by applying paragraph
formatting to a paragraph without selecting the paragraph mark (or

[quoted text clipped - 130 lines]

templates.
What is going on here?

 

[Kay H]

I don't quite understand what you mean by "defining document defaults."
Document defaults can be different for different documents, different
templates, and for different computers.

I find style sets kind of useless because (1) you can't find out what,
exactly, is in them, (2) they sometimes change only built-in styles and not
custom ones, and (3) they just add more styles to an already-cluttered style
list. I much prefer the Styles pane, a Styles dropdown on my QAT. or ALT+1,
ALT+2, etc. (the old-fashioned way). To copy styles from one file to another
I much prefer the "Manage Styles-import/export" method.

As you suspected, having a dummy "base style" doesn't help much, although
when the usual error occurs upon opening a file based on the offending
template, fixing the dummy style fixes all the rest.

But this does not make my users happy. When they open a document they expect
the body text style NOT to have large left, right, and hanging indents
identical to TOC4, they expect an ordinary paragraph. This just happened this
morning with a document based on a template I just devised last week. This is
a serious problem. The old "char char" thing is trivial in comparison to
Word's apparent inability to retain style definitions.


Kay

Although what you suggest is often done, setting the document defaults works
too. I see "style slippage" often in my clients' W2007 documents. Once I
fix the document defaults and normal, most documents behave. The ones that
don't have other things wrong with them.

BTW, I recall that you say you're not using themes and style sets, but you
might want to take a look at style sets. The styles gallery showing your
style set is a great replacement for a W2003 user-made styles toolbar.

Pam

Thanks for your suggestions, Pam. Much to think about.

I have done my fair share of searching for char styles in Word 2003, and I
did suspect that some of these problems were happening because we tend to
keep documents in .doc format. I try to keep the number of styles under
control by doing this and by using Manage Styles. But I wonder if there is
some toxic interaction with a heavily managed style list and .doc format. I
am the only person who uses Manage Styles, and I'm also the only one having
problems, so... maybe it's all me.

I'm wondering if the "style slippage" issue would be helped by defining a
unique, user-defined and named base style for each template/style set on
which I would base the other styles, rather than using Normal or "no style"
(which is what I usually do). I will continue to experiment.

Kay

I used to often see things like items 1 and 3 while editing W2003 documents.
Almost very time, multiple unlinked styles ( char char char, etc.) were

[quoted text clipped - 59 lines]

my job. We all work on the same Word docs based on our company’s templates.
What is going on here?