CHAPTER 7

Using Styles to Create a Great Looking Document

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Working with the tools in the Styles group
• Using, creating, and modifying styles
• Updating the document using a Style Set
• Creating and modifying Style Sets
• Managing styles
• Finding style inconsistencies

Styles combine power and flexibility to serve as Word's most important formatting method. Some users hesitate to take advantage of styles because they can seem like an intimidating “advanced” feature with a dizzying array of options.

This chapter gives you a handle on which style tools to use for what in Word 2013 so that you can format new documents and update the look of older ones with ease. You will learn various ways to apply, clear, create, and modify styles. The chapter also introduces Style Sets, the Style Inspector, and methods for managing styles.

Using the Styles Group to Apply Styles

It's hard to overstate the value that styles deliver when creating and formatting a document. Not only do styles help a document look more lively and consistent, they give the reader a road map to understanding the relative priority of the text. Applying heading styles helps your readers identify major topics and their subtopics, and you can use other styles to emphasize special content such as quotations and sidebars. Figure 7.1 compares a basic document that uses the default Normal style for all text to an improved version with title and heading styles applied.

FIGURE 7.1

Styles not only enhance the look of a document but also improve document readability.

The Styles group on the Home tab of the Ribbon contains the primary set of commands and choices for applying and working with styles. On its face are three controls, shown in Figure 7.2: the Style gallery, the More button for expanding the gallery, and the Styles pane launcher. Note that in the gallery, a highlight appears around the name of the style applied to the paragraph holding the insertion point.

FIGURE 7.2

The Styles group is the command and control center for styles.

The number of styles that initially appear in the gallery depends on your screen resolution. As Figure 7.2 illustrates, at a very low screen resolution, the Style gallery might only display a handful of styles. To see all the available styles, click the More button to open the full gallery, as shown in Figure 7.3. If there are still more styles in the gallery, you can access them using the vertical scroll bar or by dragging the lower-right corner control to expand or shrink the size of the gallery.

FIGURE 7.3

Click the More button to open the Style gallery and see all the available styles.

Notice also the Colors and Fonts controls. These tools work with themes, which aren't the same thing as styles. You can change the theme applied to the document to dramatically update its appearance. Unlike styles, however, themes are tied to the use of theme elements such as theme colors and effects applied to objects in your document. One way to think about themes is as design elements that affect the aesthetic appearance of a document. Styles, on the other hand, are geared more to the formatting of text and paragraphs. Chapter 18, “Saving Time with Templates, Themes, and Master Documents,” explores themes.

In a moment you'll learn how to use the gallery and other mouse-oriented methods for applying styles. Word includes built-in shortcut keys for applying the most commonly-used styles. Using only the keyboard shortcuts listed in Table 7.1, you can accomplish a significant amount of style formatting in a typical report or similar document. Move the insertion point into the paragraph to format, and press the keyboard shortcut for the desired style.

TABLE 7.1 Keyboard Shortcuts for Applying Built-in Styles

Press This Keyboard Shortcut	To Apply This Style
Ctrl+Shift+N	Normal
Alt+Ctrl+1	Heading 1
Alt+Ctrl+2	Heading 2
Alt+Ctrl+3	Heading 3

Applying styles from the Style gallery

When you first start typing in any new Word document, Word automatically applies the default Normal style to the text. As you create different types of content in the document, you should consider applying an appropriate style. For example, if you type a heading, consider applying a heading style to it, such as Heading 1, 2, or 3. The Normal.dotm template also includes built-in styles for the titles, subtitles, quotes, sidebars, emphasizing text, and more. To apply a style:

1. Click in the paragraph to format, or select the text to format. Whether you need to select the text depends on whether the style is a paragraph style, character style, or linked style. This is explained further in Step 3. (The section called “Formatting Characters Directly or with Styles” in Chapter 5, “Font/Character Formatting,” explained what paragraph, character, and linked styles are and the differences in how they work.)
2. If needed, click the More button to open the Style gallery.
3. Move the mouse button over a style to display a Live Preview of how the selected text would look with the style applied. See Figure 7.4. If you've just moved the insertion point to the paragraph rather than selecting text, Live Preview shows the style you've pointed to applied to the entire paragraph when it's a paragraph or linked style. For a character-only style, the style preview appears for only the word holding the insertion point. If you find that you need to apply a character style to more than just the current word, move the mouse pointer off the gallery and click in a blank area of the document. Then select the text and start over.
4. Click the style in the gallery to apply it and close the gallery.

   FIGURE 7.4

   Point to a style in the Style gallery to see a Live Preview in the current paragraph or selection.

   

Applying styles using the Styles pane

Word 2013 continues to offer the Styles pane (or task pane), which you can use to view even more styles than appear in the Style gallery, and which offers additional commands for working with styles. You can either click the launcher in the lower-right corner of the Styles group of the Home tab or press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S to open the Styles pane, shown in Figure 7.5. The pane by default lists only Recommended styles, and the style applied to the text holding the insertion point has a rectangular selection box around it (the Intense Quote style in Figure 7.5). See the “Recommended styles” section later in the chapter to learn more about what they are and how to work with them.

FIGURE 7.5

Click the Styles group launcher or press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S to open the Styles pane.

The basic method for applying a style from the Styles pane is similar to that for the Style gallery:

1. Click in the paragraph to format, or select the text to format. Whether you need to select the text depends on whether the style is a paragraph, linked, or character style.
2. Click the style in the Style pane to apply it.

This method doesn't enable you to get a Live Preview of the style before you apply it, but you can get information about a style prior to applying it in the Styles pane. You can do either of the following:

• Move the mouse pointer over the style to display a ScreenTip with information about the style's Font formatting settings, Paragraph formatting settings, and Style-related settings.
• Click the Show Preview check box below the list of styles in the pane. As shown in Figure 7.6, the styles listed in the pane preview their formatting settings. Also notice that this may make the basic list of styles too long to display in the pane, depending on your system's screen resolution. When that's the case and you move the mouse pointer over the list of styles, a scroll bar appears, and you can use it to scroll to the style choices you want.

FIGURE 7.6

Check Show Preview to see how each style looks in the Styles pane.

Select some text holding a particular style in the document, and then move the mouse pointer over that style in the Styles pane, and a drop-down list arrow appears to the right of it. Click the arrow to open a menu of commands for working with the style, as shown in Figure 7.7. (You also can right-click the style in the Styles gallery of the Styles group of the Home tab to see the same menu.) The commands available on the menu vary depending on the type of style and whether you've selected any text in the document. The two most useful ones for working with the style formatting are:

• Select All/Select All # Instance(s): Click Select All to select all instances of the style in the document if it's the first time you're selecting the style during the current work session; after that the command changes to Select All # Instance(s). You can then reopen the drop-down list see the number of locations in the document where you've applied the selected style. You can then select another style to apply to all the selected areas of text, quickly changing from one style to another throughout the document. If you've previously selected and then deselected all instances of the style, you can reopen the menu and choose Select All # Instance(s) to reselect them.
• Remove All/Clear Formatting of # Instance(s): Click this option to clean up a document's extraneous formatting. If you have not selected instances of the style in the current Word work session, the command that appears is Remove All. That command changes to Clear Formatting of # instances after you've selected all the instances of the style using one of the options noted in the prior bullet. Remove All/Clear Formatting of # Instance(s) does not delete the text in question. Instead, it removes the style wherever it is used, and resets the formatting of those occurrences to the default style for the current document, usually Normal.

FIGURE 7.7

Open the style's menu to access helpful commands.

Reapplying or resetting a style

After you apply a style, you can apply direct formatting such as bold, italic, paragraph spacing changes, and so on. If you later decide to remove the added formatting, you don't have to backtrack setting by setting. Instead, you can reapply the style or reset the text to the style to remove the extra formatting settings all at once. Use any of these three methods to get the job done after selecting the text to reset:

• Click the style again in the Styles pane.
• Click Reapply in the Apply Styles pane.
• Press Ctrl+Spacebar.

Clearing all styles from selected text

You can clear all style formatting from selected text, which returns the text to the default Normal style. As for some of the other aspects of dealing with styles, Word 2013 provides many ways to handle this task in addition to using the Clear Formatting of # Instance(s) command in the Styles task pane as described earlier:

• Click the Style gallery More button, and then click Clear Formatting at the bottom. (Refer to Figure 7.4.)
• In the Styles task pane, click the Clear All choice at the top.
• On the Home tab of the Ribbon, click the Clear Formatting button in the upper-right corner of the Font group.

Modifying and Creating Styles

Despite the variety of styles available in most document templates, you may not find the exact style to give your document the appearance you want. The font or point size might be wrong, or the spacing might be off. No problem. Change it. Or, if you still need the existing style but want a slightly different version for another purpose, create a new style.

Modifying an existing style

When you've already applied a style throughout a document, you might want to modify that existing style to adjust the look of the already formatted text rather than applying a different style. You might need to make only a slight change to the style, such as adjusting its font size or spacing. To change an existing style:

1. Right-click the style in the Style gallery or open the style's menu in the Styles pane, and click Modify; you also can select the style and click the Modify button in the Apply Styles pane. Any of the methods opens the Modify Style dialog box shown in Figure 7.8.
2. Make the desired formatting changes to the style. The Formatting section of the dialog box includes a number of the settings found in the Font and Paragraph groups on the Home tab of the Ribbon. If the formatting you need to change isn't shown, click the Format button in the lower-left corner and click one of the choices there, such as Numbering or Text Effects, to open a dialog box with additional formatting settings. Click Close or OK to finish working in that additional dialog box.
3. Click OK to close the Modify Style dialog box. Word updates the formatting for all text with the style applied in the document.

FIGURE 7.8

Use the Modify Style dialog box to make changes to a style.

A second way to update a style is to use the controls in the Font and Paragraph groups in the Home tab of the Ribbon to reformat some text to which you previously applied the style. When the text looks the way you want, click the style's drop-down arrow in the Styles pane, and then click Update Style Name to Match Selection.

If you find you frequently update style formatting, remember that you can enable Prompt to update style in Word's Advanced options. Then, any time you make formatting changes to styled text (except for the Normal style, which can't be automatically updated by any method) and then click the style's name in the Styles pane, Word displays the prompt dialog box shown in Figure 7.9. The Update the style to reflect recent changes option will add the new formatting to the style's definition, whereas the Reapply the formatting of the style to the selection option will revert the style. Leave the former option selected and then click OK to finish changing the style. To enable Prompt to update style, choose File Options Advanced, and in the Editing options section, click to check Prompt to update style. Click OK.

FIGURE 7.9

If you've enabled Prompt to update style, Word asks you to confirm whether you want to update or reapply the style.

Creating a style from scratch

There are a couple of different ways you can create a new style. In general, every new style you create will be based on an existing style. So you will want to start from a style that's similar to the type of style you need to create. For example, if you want to create a Body Text style, start by reformatting some Normal text. Or, if you want to create a new heading style, start from the existing heading style that's closest to the look you want.

Here's how to use the Create New Style from Formatting dialog box to save a new style:

1. Select some text that uses a style similar to the one you want to create, and apply desired formatting. Leave the text selected.
2. Click the New Style button in the lower-left corner of the Styles pane. The Create New Style from Formatting dialog box shown in Figure 7.10 appears.
3. Type a name for the style in the Name text box.
4. Make further adjustments to the style settings as needed. For example, use the Style type drop-down list to indicate whether the style is a Paragraph, Character, Linked (paragraph and character), or another type of style. If you leave Paragraph selected as the style, use the Style for following paragraph drop-down to choose which style Word automatically applies to any new paragraph you create by pressing Enter. For a heading style, you would want this to be a Normal or body text style in many cases. Also apply any additional formatting changes as needed.
5. Leave Add to the Styles gallery checked to provide access to the style via that control on the Home tab of the Ribbon.
6. Click OK to finish creating the style.

FIGURE 7.10

Set up a completely new style in this dialog box.

You also can also use the Modify Style dialog box to create a new style. Just change the entry in the Name text box in addition to making any formatting changes, and when you click OK Word creates the new style.

Changing the Whole Document via Style Sets

Word 2013 offers an improved version of the Quick Style Sets feature offered in prior Word versions. You can find them, now called Style Sets, in a gallery on the Design tab, in the Document Formatting group. Applying a different Style Set updates all the style formatting throughout the document to use different paragraph and character style formatting.

I emphasize style formatting because if paragraphs have direct formatting applied, applying a Style Set does not override that formatting. For example, if you manually change the alignment of a series of paragraphs from left aligned to centered, any alignment formatting in a Style Set you apply will be ignored.

The impact of applying a particular Style Set—indeed, seeing any effect at all—depends on your having used styles in your document. If you simply left all the text formatted with the Normal style, then at most applying a new Style Set will change the font. For maximum benefit from Word's style features, you need to lay the proper foundation, which means using styles to differentiate different kinds of text (headings, body, captions, and so on).

Applying a Style Set

When you apply a new Style Set, Word replaces the style definitions in the current document with those contained in the Style Set's .dotx file. (More about this shortly.) It effectively overlays a new document template over what you're already using (even though the name of the underlying document template does not change), updating all text that uses any corresponding styles found in the Style Set. To apply a new Style Set to the document:

1. Click the Design tab on the Ribbon.
2. If needed, click the More button to open the Style Set gallery in the Document Formatting group.
3. Move the mouse button over a Style Set to display a Live Preview of how the selected text would look with the style applied. See Figure 7.11.
4. When you find the Style Set you want to use, click it to apply it to the document.

FIGURE 7.11

Point to a Style Set in the gallery to see a Live Preview of the potential new document styles.

Creating and deleting Style Sets

You create your own Style Sets to give yourself even more power and flexibility to format your documents with just the styles you want. Word stores each Style Set in a .dotx (not macro-enabled) template. When you create a Style Set, Word automatically suggests saving it in C:Usersuser nameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftQuickStyles folder. Leave this folder selected so that your custom Style Set will be automatically included in the Style Set gallery. Follow this process to create and save a Style Set:

1. Apply a Style Set, if needed, and modify the document styles as desired. The modified document styles will be stored in the new Style Set.
2. Click the Design tab, click the More button in the Document Formatting group to open the Style Set gallery, and then click Save as a New Style Set. The Save as a New Style Set dialog box shown in Figure 7.12 appears.
3. Type a name for the Style Set file in the File name text box.
4. Click Save.

FIGURE 7.12

Word automatically suggests a specific folder to hold your new Style Set file.

When you display the Style Set gallery after creating at least one custom Style Set, the gallery includes your Style Set in the new Custom category. If you want to delete a custom Style Set, right-click it in the gallery as shown in Figure 7.13, and click Delete. Click Yes in the dialog box that prompts you to confirm the deletion.

FIGURE 7.13

Right-click a Custom Style Set in the gallery and then click Delete to remove the Style Set.

Word stores each of its default Style Set files in the C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Officeoffice151033QuickStyles (32-bit version) or C:Program FilesMicrosoft Officeoffice151033QuickStyles (64-bit version) folder, as shown in Figure 7.14. The default Style Sets are stored as Word template (.dotx) files. In theory, you can apply one of the Style Sets to a blank document, modify the styles, and then use the Save as a New Style dialog box to navigate to the folder holding the default Style Set files, and enter the name of one of those files to save over it, thus modifying it. In practice, though, leaving the default Style Set files undisturbed and creating your own Style Set files gives you the choice to continue using the default styles in the future along with your custom sets.

FIGURE 7.14

The default Style Sets are stored as Word template files.

Changing your mind

If you've been experimenting with Style Sets but now want to revert to the styles of the document's underlying template, in most cases you can. Click the Design tab, and in the Document Formatting group, click the More button to open the Style Set gallery. Click Reset to Default Style Set near the bottom of the gallery to reset the styles immediately.

Managing Styles

You have control over numerous other aspects of how and where styles appear and behave in Word. Cleaning up or expanding the style listings can make you much more efficient when you're taking on the task of formatting your document. This section covers the most important style management features you need to know about.

Choosing which styles to display in the Styles pane

By default, the Styles pane displays a list of Recommended styles. You can change and prioritize the recommended styles that appear as described shortly in the “Recommended styles” section. But you can instead choose to display just in use styles (used throughout your documents), styles used in the current document, or all styles in the template. The last choice is great when you can't find the type of style you need. For example, when you display all styles, the Styles pane includes nine heading styles instead of the normal three. To choose the styles that appear in the Styles pane for the current document:

1. Display the Styles pane if needed. To do so, click the launcher in the Styles group or press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S.
2. Click the Options link in the lower-right corner.
3. Open the Select styles to show drop-down (Figure 7.15), and click a choice.
4. Click OK.

FIGURE 7.15

Choose how many styles Word lists in the Styles task pane.

Removing a style from the gallery

Depending on how avidly you create and use your own styles, your Style gallery could rapidly fill with styles, making it more cumbersome to use than it otherwise would be. You might want to trim the styles that appear in the gallery for certain documents, so you can more readily work with the styles you prefer. Removing a style from the Style gallery does not remove the style from the document; it only removes it from the gallery listing.

Use the Styles pane to control a style's inclusion in the Style gallery. Click the style's drop-down arrow, and then click Remove from Style Gallery to remove it. To reinstate the style in the gallery, display its menu again, and then click Add to Style Gallery.

You also can remove a style from the Style gallery by right-clicking the style and clicking Remove from Gallery.

Recommended styles

Word includes a Manage Styles dialog box that enables you to perform advanced style management operations. Though there's not room to cover all the options exhaustively, you can get familiar with some key options here. To open the dialog box, click the Manage Styles button at the bottom of the Styles task pane.

The Recommend tab, shown in Figure 7.16, controls which styles show up on the list of recommended styles. A recommended style shows up in each of the style-related task panes and the Style gallery. Click a style in the list at the top, and then click the desired button under Set whether style shows when viewing recommended styles. Clicking Show ensures the style will be displayed, or you can select Hide until used or Hide. It's a great way to focus the options when you want to exercise strong control over document formatting.

In the list of styles at the top of the dialog box, you can apply your changes one at a time or by using standard Windows selection techniques to select multiple styles. Note the Select All and Select Built-in buttons, too, which enable you to quickly distinguish between Word's standard styles and user-created styles.

Use the Move Up/Move Down/Make Last/Assign Value tools to determine the recommended order. You can even alphabetize them, if that makes more sense to you. Click OK to apply your changes when finished.

FIGURE 7.16

Use the Recommend tab to control what styles show up when you restrict style controls to displaying recommended styles.

Restricted styles

For even stronger style enforcement, the Restrict tab of the Manage Styles dialog box enables you to limit which styles can be used. This is a good tool for designing templates and forms in which you want extremely tight control over the content formatting. It's also useful in setting up training classes for Word, when you might want to tame the options a bit to avoid overwhelming the novice user.

Additionally, if you want to enforce the use of only styles—and not direct formatting—the restricted styles capability provides a way to do it. Check Limit formatting to permitted styles, shown near the bottom of Figure 7.17, to accomplish this feat.

By restricting formatting only to styles, you effectively prevent the use of direct formatting tools. As shown in Figure 7.18, when formatting is restricted to Normal and Heading 1 through Heading 5, most of the Ribbon Font and Paragraph controls are grayed out (dimmed) as unavailable.

FIGURE 7.17

The Restrict tab enables you to make direct formatting off-limits.

FIGURE 7.18

Limiting formatting to the use of styles turns off many of the direct formatting tools on the Home tab of the Ribbon.

To control the availability of a particular style, click it in the list on the Restrict tab, and then click either Permit or Restrict under Set availability of selected styles. Note that not only can you limit formatting only to permitted styles; you can also enable Block Theme or Scheme switching. If you want to tame “artistic” tendencies of users whose mission statement apparently includes using up all the colored ink or toner in the company printer, this provides an avenue of attack.

When you finish making your choices, click OK. A Start Enforcing Protection dialog box prompts you to enter and confirm a password. Do so, and then click OK.

Deleting a style

You can delete a style from the Styles pane. As mentioned earlier, Word won't let you delete certain built-in styles such as Normal. However, you can delete any custom style you create if you decide not to use it. Point to the style in the task pane, click its down arrow, and then click Delete Style Name. At the confirmation prompt, click Yes.

Style Inspector

The Style Inspector enables you to quickly determine whether the formatting for selected text consists of a style alone, or a style and direct formatting. In Figure 7.19, notice that under the Paragraph formatting and Text level formatting (character), the first box identifies the applied style, and the second box has the word Plus:. The text to the right of the Plus: identifies any potential direct formatting applied over the style.

To use the Style Inspector, select the text to diagnose, and then click the Style Inspector button at the bottom of the Styles pane.

FIGURE 7.19

The Style Inspector can help you diagnose where direct formatting has been applied to styled text.

Summary

In this chapter you explored a variety of features that can help you format a document faster and more consistently through styles. You should also be able to do the following:

• Use the Style gallery, Styles pane, and other methods to apply, create, and modify styles
• Use the Styles pane to quickly select all occurrences of any given style
• Reapply a style's formatting
• Update the look of the whole document by applying a Style Set
• Create and delete a custom Style Set
• Control which styles appear in the Styles pane and the Style gallery
• Use the Manage Styles dialog box to hide and restrict styles and direct formatting
• Use the Style Inspector to solve formatting mysteries