The more sophisticated you become with the documents you produce, the more likely you are to want to automate and organize the content you create and use. Word 2010 offers a number of features that help you to work more efficiently and productively. Building blocks, which you learned about in Chapter 7, help you create, save, and reuse content in various ways in all sorts of documents. Styles are to formats what building blocks are to content. With a style, you can use a ready-made set of formatting attributes and apply them consistently to characters, paragraphs, lists, and tables. This helps you build consistency into your document (one of the keystones of effective communication; sudden changes of format can interrupt your reader and cause them to lose the thread of your message).
Word 2010 carries on the Quick Styles approach started in Word 2007 by offering you a gallery of style sets that you can apply to the text in your document. These style sets are tied to the theme you’ve selected (remember themes? We covered them in Chapter 4), so the types of style sets you find in your current document will vary depending on the theme you’ve selected for your basic document design.
And of course, you can tailor the style sets, create your own, and modify existing styles to your heart’s content. These items and more are the focus of this chapter.
In Chapter 11, you learned about a number of ways Word 2010 helps you automate and control your formatting and apply ready-made formatting choices—such as bulleted, numbered, and multilevel list styles—to your document content. Because there are so many different ways to use styles in Word, developers separated the tools you use to apply text styles, list styles, and table styles. This helps you find and apply just the styles you need for the document element with which you happen to be working.
Tip
The styles you use for formatting lists and text in your document are found on the Home tab, in the Paragraph and Styles groups. The styles used for formatting tables appear on the Table Tools contextual tab. To learn more about table styles in Word 2010, see Chapter 15.
Word 2010 also provides the Styles gallery and the Styles pane to help you see which styles are available in your document and choose or modify them to suit your needs.
Watching Styles as You Work
If you want to see which styles are currently in play in the document you’re working on, you can display a Style area along the left side of your document. The area lists the various styles connected to paragraphs, headings, images, and more in your document text. To display the Styles area, follow these steps:
You can leave the Style area displayed while you work if you want to be able to check styles as you move along in your document. You can add content and edit in Page Layout mode, and then click the Draft tool in the lower-right corner of the screen to check your styles periodically. If you want to close the Styles area later, simply redisplay the Advanced tab, scroll to Display options, and return the Style Area Pane Width in Draft and Outline View value to 0.
You’ll find the Styles gallery at the right side on the Home tab, in the Styles group. To see all the styles that are currently available based on the theme you’ve selected, click the Styles More button. The gallery offers a number of styles of different sorts—headline styles, body text styles, quotes, and more (see Figure 12-1).
Figure 12-1. The Styles gallery offers a collection of styles based on the currently selected theme that you are likely to want to apply.
You’ll notice a couple of things about the styles in the gallery. First, each selection shows a preview of the way the text will look when it’s formatted in that particular style. The styles offer different font sizes, styles, and effects (such as underline or font color). Notice also that to the left of some of the styles in the gallery, you see a small paragraph mark. This mark lets you know what kind of style you’re selecting. The ones with a paragraph mark are known—not surprisingly—as paragraph styles.
Word has five primary types of styles for formatting specific content, which are described in the following list:
Paragraph. Used for formatting a paragraph as a whole. Attributes for an entire paragraph, such as alignment, line spacing, indents, tabs, paragraph spacing, borders, and shading, can be defined in a paragraph style. Fonts can also be part of a paragraph style. In addition, you can apply character styles locally within a paragraph to add specific formatting attributes to selected words.
Character. Character styles are designed to change the format of individual characters, letters, words, or phrases. You might apply a character style, for example, to boldface a particular product name or to make a definition term stand out. Character styles, in effect, layer over paragraph styles so both can be used at once. Additionally, linked styles can be used as both paragraph and character styles.
Note
Because the bold format is considered a toggle format, if a character style that includes the bold format is used with a paragraph style that is also defined with the bold format, the character style cancels out the bold of the paragraph style, which results in text that is not bold. This is an idiosyncrasy of toggle formats: two “on codes” result in an “off code,” so the resulting text will not appear in bold.
Linked Style. A linked style is a combination paragraph and character style. Font formats defined in the style can be used as a character style and applied to a portion of a paragraph, or it can be used as a paragraph style with both the font and paragraph formats applied to the entire paragraph. If you select text within a paragraph and apply a style but the entire paragraph is formatted, then you are using a paragraph style rather than a linked style. Note that Word 2010 includes many linked styles.
Tip
In cases where you want to use linked styles strictly as a paragraph style, you can turn off linking by displaying the Style pane (click the dialog launcher in the Styles group), and clicking Disable Linked Styles.
Note
Heading 1, for example, is actually a linked style and not a paragraph style. In Style Example 1, because the cursor was placed in the paragraph and no text was selected, Heading 1 acted as a paragraph style and the formats were applied to the entire paragraph. Had you selected a portion of the paragraph, then the font formats of the styles would have been applied to the selected text only.
List. List styles are used for defining multilevel lists. Font formatting can be defined in the style, but the only paragraph formats that can be defined are paragraph indents, which are defined in the numbering format. See Chapter 11 for more information on creating and modifying list styles.
Table. Table styles are used for defining table formatting. Paragraph and font formats can be defined along with table properties. Banding formats (alternating row or column colors) and specific table elements, such as the header row, total row, first column, last column, and so on, can be formatted individually.
Styles are defined and stored with the document, and wherever the document goes, the formatting travels with it. If a built-in style such as Heading 1 is modified in a document, then by default those modifications are only stored in that document and the modification does not change the built-in style. If you make changes to a style that is part of the attached template (for example, Normal.dotm), Word 2010 will ask you when you close the file whether you want to update the current styles. If you want the style changes to be applied to the template (and thus available to other documents that use that same template), click Yes. If you click No, the styles will remain active in the current document only.
Quick Styles were introduced in Word 2007; in Word 2010, they continue to offer sets of styles that you can easily apply to your documents—with a single click. Quick Styles are designed to look good together so you can feel confident about the formats you apply. Quick Styles come in a variety of designs, which gives you a wide range of choices for the look and feel of your document.
Distinctive | Modern | Traditional |
Elegant | Newsprint | Word 2003 |
Fancy | Perspective | Word 2010 |
Formal | Simple | |
Manuscript | Thatch |
Quick Styles help to automate the formats you apply to your document and reduce the amount of work you need to do if you decide to change the look and feel of the document or reuse some of the content in another file. Because Quick Styles are tied to themes, when you choose a different theme, the look and feel of the headings, body text, list styles, and more will change automatically. And you can create a completely different look by choosing a different Quick Style set for your document.
Note
If you have created new formats in your document but not applied styles to text elements, those items will not be updated automatically when you change Quick Style sets or themes.
Note
You might have noticed that the term Quick Styles is used in other chapters. It is not used in reference to the Styles group found on the Home tab because the term Quick Styles is not limited to text styles. Quick Styles are galleries of predefined formats found throughout Word 2010, such as the Picture gallery (Picture Quick Styles), the Chart gallery (Chart Quick Styles), and the SmartArt gallery (SmartArt Quick Styles), to name but a few. For a better understanding, if you reduce the width of your Word window small enough, the auto scale functionality of the Ribbon reduces these in-Ribbon galleries to a single button labeled Quick Styles.
For the sake of clarity, in this chapter, the term Quick Styles refers to the Quick Style gallery found on the Home tab.
The process of applying a Quick Style is very simple. Open the document to which you want to apply the style set and follow these steps:
Click in the document at the point where you want to apply the style, or select the text you want to format.
On the Home tab, click the style you want in the Styles gallery.
You can display additional styles by clicking the More button in the lower-right corner of the gallery (see Figure 12-2).
Hover the mouse over the style set you’d like to see. Your document previews the set at the pointer position.
Click the style you want to apply.
Note
In order to preview styles by hovering the mouse over gallery items, you must be viewing the document in either Print Layout or Web Layout view.
What if the desired style isn’t quite what you are looking for? Perhaps you’d rather see Heading 1 formatted in a different font color instead. You can update a style using the Quick Style gallery by following these simple steps:
Select the paragraph you want to change and apply the new setting for the attributes you want to modify (for example, apply the color choice you want).
With the text selected, on the Home tab, right-click Heading 1 in the Quick Style gallery. Click Update Heading 1 To Match Selection.
Heading 1 should now be updated to match the formats specified in the current paragraph.
That’s all you need to do to redefine a style. If you want to verify your results, place your cursor in the second paragraph and click the Heading 1 style in the Quick Style gallery.
You might have noticed other options when you right-clicked the style, such as Select All # Instance(s); Rename, which allows you to rename the style; Remove From Quick Style Gallery, which removes the style from the gallery but does not remove the style from the document; and Modify, as shown in the following image.
The Modify option opens the Modify Style dialog box and provides additional options that are not available when updating a style using the Update Style Name To Match Selection method. You can learn more about the Modify Style dialog box in the section titled Creating and Modifying Styles.
The 11 different Quick Style Sets give you a wide range to choose from as you’re planning the overall design of your document. From traditional to modern, from contemplative to businesslike, the different style sets convey unique senses of tone and format. You can easily switch among the Quick Style Sets in your document, applying new fonts, sizes, and styles for headings, body text, and special text elements in your file—all with a single click. To exchange a Quick Style Set, follow these steps:
Open the document you want to change.
In the Styles group on the Home tab, click Change Styles.
Point to Style Sets and hover your mouse over the Style Set list.
Note how Live Preview shows you how the formats of the Quick Styles Sets will look in your document.
Once you find a Style Set you like, click to exchange the Quick Styles with the new Style Set.
Quick Style Sets are stored in external document template (.dotx) files, and you can easily save the set of Quick Styles for any document as a Quick Style Set. You might want to create a custom Quick Style Set, for example, to share with your co-authors who are working on sections of the large project you’re creating together.
To create a new, custom Quick Style Set, follow these steps:
Open the document you want to use to define the Quick Style Set.
Use the styles in the Styles gallery to format the headings, body text, and other text elements in the document as you want them to appear in the new Quick Style Set.
Change the style to reflect the formatting you want to include by making your formatting changes, right-clicking the corresponding style in the Styles gallery, and clicking Update <style> to Match Selection. For example, if you want to update the Heading 1 style, change the format in the text in the document that is assigned to the Heading 1 style, and then right-click Heading 1 in the Style gallery and choose Update Heading 1 To Match Selection. Repeat as needed with other styles in the document.
If you do not want to include a style in your Quick Style Set, right-click the style and click Remove From Quick Style Gallery.
Note that this does not delete the style, but only removes it from the gallery.
Once you make all of your changes, click Change Styles, point to Style Set, and click Save As Quick Style Set, located at the bottom of the list. The Save Quick Style Set dialog box displays.
Caution
In addition to saving the styles listed in the Quick Style Gallery, the Document Defaults are also saved in a Quick Style Set and should be set accordingly, or you might encounter undesired results in other styles when using your custom Quick Style Set in other documents. For more on Document Defaults, see the section titled Managing Styles.
In the Save As Quick Style dialog box, do not change the Save In folder. Type a name for your new Quick Style Set in the File Name text box and then click Save.
Your Quick Style Set is saved in the QuickStyles folder and will now appear in the Quick Style Set list so that you can choose it for future documents.
Test your new Quick Style Set by creating a new document and changing the Quick Style Set accordingly.
Note
Any template or document placed in the QuickStyles folder that contains Quick Styles is available in the list of Style Sets. The QuickStyles folder will be the C:UsersusernameAppDataRoamingMicrosoft folder for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista.
To delete a custom Quick Style Set, simply delete the Quick Style Set file from the QuickStyles folder. Built-in Quick Style Sets can also be modified and deleted from the QuickStyles folder.
To set a Quick Style Set as your default set of styles for all new documents based on the Normal template, use the Set As Default command under Change Styles.
If the command reads Set Default for Template Name Template, then the defaults are set for all documents based on the template indicated in the text of the command.
If you are wondering about the other built-in styles not shown by default in the Quick Style gallery, this section of the chapter covers how you can access them.
Along with the Quick Style gallery, there are two additional tools—the Styles pane and the Apply Styles pane—that you can use to access styles as well as another style tool designed specifically for the Quick Access Toolbar (discussed in the Inside Out tip titled Inside Out: Where Is the Old Styles Combo Box?). In general, these tools provide the same functionality, and you can use them either in combination or use only the tool that meets your needs. The following list describes the Styles pane and Apply Styles pane and how to access them:
Styles pane. The Styles pane is your primary tool for applying and modifying styles. This pane provides a list of styles and gives you access to style management tools, such as the New Style dialog box, Style Inspector, and Manage Styles dialog box. To access the Styles pane, click the dialog launcher in the Styles group on the Home tab, or press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S to toggle its view. The Styles pane can float or be docked along the side of your document window.
Apply Styles pane. Smaller than the Styles pane, the Apply Styles pane uses a combo box to access styles. It is intended to be used as a small floating pane, but it can also be docked. To access the Apply Styles pane, click the More button on the Quick Styles gallery and then click Apply Styles below the gallery, or press Ctrl+Shift+S to display the Apply Styles pane shown here:
To apply a style using any of these tools, simply place your cursor in a paragraph—you can also select a portion of a paragraph or select multiple paragraphs—and then click the style to apply it.
Inside Out: Where Is the Old Styles Combo Box?
If you recognized the Ctrl+Shift+S keyboard shortcut from previous versions of Word but didn’t see the old familiar Styles combo found previously on the Formatting toolbar, rest assured that you can still use the Styles combo box in Word 2010. Originally, the Apply Styles pane was to be the replacement control, but many Word enthusiasts felt it wasn’t quite the same. Microsoft listened to their feedback and created a Styles combo box that can be added to the Quick Access Toolbar—the ability to hold Shift and then click the list arrow to toggle the display of all styles was included as well.
To add the Styles combo box, click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button at the end of the Quick Access Toolbar and then click More Commands. From the Choose Commands From list, click Commands Not In The Ribbon, locate Style as shown in the following image, and click Add to include it on your Quick Access Toolbar. Now you can choose and apply the styles from the Quick Access Toolbar by simply clicking the Styles arrow and selecting the style you want.
The Styles pane is your central hub for style management. Here you’ll find a list of all styles currently in use in your document. You also have the option of displaying all paragraph and linked styles available to you as well as styles displayed in formats that will be used in the document. To open the Styles pane, click the dialog launcher in the Styles group on the Home tab or press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S. Two examples of the Styles pane (with and without the formatting preview) are shown in Figure 12-3.
Figure 12-3. The Styles pane is shown with the default view on the left and the Show Preview option selected on the right.
When you create a new document based on the Normal template in Word 2010, the Styles pane shows the same styles found in the Quick Style gallery by default. You can display all styles by using the Options link at the bottom of the Styles pane.
Table and list styles are not displayed in the Styles pane. To display list styles, use the Multilevel List tool on the Home tab in the Paragraph group; you can access Table styles in the Table Styles gallery, which is on the contextual Table Tools Design tab (displayed when a table is active). The Apply Styles pane and Styles combo box can list all styles, including table and list styles.
The Styles pane contains the following elements:
Styles. The Styles list shows the name of the style followed by a symbol that identifies the style type: paragraph (¶), character (a), and linked (¶a). If no symbol appears next to a list item, the item represents direct formatting (not shown by default). For any style in the Style list, you can hover the pointer over the style to view a summary of the style’s settings (style definition) and access additional options by clicking the arrow that appears to the left (or right-click the style). This includes options that are similar to those you see when you right-click a style in the Quick Style gallery, such as Update Style Name To Match Selection, Select All # Instance(s), Modify, and Add To Quick Style Gallery. It also includes the ability to delete a style and clear the formatting from text that uses the style. For in-depth information on these options, see the next Inside Out tip titled Inside Out: Clearing and Deleting Styles.
Disable Linked Styles. You can, in effect, “turn off” the linked styles aspect of your styles so that they behave like paragraph styles, applying a style to the entire paragraph and not only selected text.
Show Preview. You can view style formats in the Styles list to help you find styles visually.
New Style. Displays the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box. This is where you can create a new style. Additional details on new styles can be found in the section titled Creating and Modifying Styles.
Style Inspector. Opens the Style Inspector dialog box, which helps you to identify the style and formatting applied to paragraphs and text. Using the Style Inspector, you can open the Reveal Formatting task pane as well as identify and clear styles and formatting, which is discussed in the section titled Inspecting Styles.
Manage Styles. Opens the Manage Styles dialog box, in which you can modify, create, and import/export styles; specify the names and order of the styles that show in the Styles pane and Apply Styles list by default; and restrict availability of styles and the ability to change style sets or Themes. For more information, see the section titled Style Management Tools.
Options. Opens the Style Pane Options dialog box, as shown in Figure 12-4. With Options, you can specify which styles are displayed—such as Recommended, In Use, In Current Document, or All Styles—and how they are sorted. You can also enable the display of direct formatting in the Styles list and Styles combo box. As previously noted, direct formatting does not include a style type symbol to the left of the name.
Note
The Hide Built-in Name When Alternate Name Exists option is used when an alias, or another name, is assigned to a style. They are created by typing a comma after the style name when creating, modifying, or renaming a style and then typing the alias. If you see a style name such as Heading 1, H1, H1 is the alias. The primary purpose of an alias is to facilitate quick navigation to the style when using the keyboard method to apply styles using either the Apply Styles pane or Styles combo box.
With all the different styles and style sets Word 2010 offers, you might never need to create unique styles of your own. But if you want to create a specific effect—suppose, for example, that you want to match the font and style in other documents your company has produced—you can create your own styles to fit the format you’re envisioning.
Many complex documents, such as the manuscript used to create this book, might use a set of styles to format specific document components. For example, there are three primary styles used for an Inside Out tip: a style for the title, a style for the text in the tip, and a style to denote the end of the tip. These types of situations call for creating custom styles. This section covers creating new styles and explains how to modify styles by using the Modify Style dialog box.
One of the easiest ways to create a style is to format existing text and then define a style based on the formatted text. Here are the steps to get you started:
Begin by formatting the text you want to save as a style.
Click the dialog launcher in the Styles group to display the Styles pane.
Click the New Style button. The Create New Style from Formatting dialog box appears (see Figure 12-5).
The Create New Style From Formatting dialog box offers options specific to the type of style you’re creating (character, paragraph, linked [paragraph and character], table, or list), as well as access to formatting options found throughout Word. You’ll find that the options in the Formatting area change depending on the type of style you are creating; the Format button at the bottom provides access to the various dialog boxes if you are looking for a specific formatting option that isn’t available in the main dialog box. Depending on the style type, some dialog boxes are inaccessible if the formats are not supported.
After you customize your formats in a document and display the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box, finish creating your new style by following these steps:
In the dialog box, type a name for your new style in the Name box.
Think carefully when you consider names to associate with styles—the more descriptive your style names are, the easier it is for you (and others) to identify each style’s purpose and apply the proper style within documents.
In the Style Type list box, specify whether your style is a paragraph, character, linked (paragraph and character), table, or list style. Most styles are paragraph or linked styles.
Specify a style on which to base your new style. (See the section titled Additional Style Options for more information on this option.)
Set the style for the following paragraph.
In the Formatting area, configure any additional properties for your style using the Font and Size options, as well as color selection, alignment, line spacing, above and below spacing, and indents.
If necessary, click Format to access additional formatting options (see Figure 12-6).
When you finish configuring formatting options, click OK.
Tip
To quickly create a new style based on your formatting and add it to the Quick Style gallery, right-click the text, point to Styles, and then click Save Selection As New Quick Style. Alternatively, click the More button on the Quick Style gallery and then click Save Selection As New Quick Style.
The newly-created style appears in the Styles pane as well as in the Quick Styles gallery. You can use and modify your new styles just as if they were built-in styles. The next few sections address some of the additional configuration options found in the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box, such as the Style Based On and Style For Following Paragraph options.
Modifying a style is just as easy as creating a style. The main difference between creating and modifying styles is that you use the Modify Style dialog box instead of the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box. The following list provides the most common methods used for accessing the Modify Style dialog box:
Apply Styles dialog box. Select a style in the Style Name list and click Modify.
Quick Styles gallery. Right-click the style and choose Modify. If you simply want to change a style’s name, right-click a style and click Rename to open the Rename Style dialog box.
Styles pane. Hover the pointer over a style name, click the arrow, and choose Modify, or right-click a style name and click Modify.
The Modify Style dialog box looks very similar to its counterpart, the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box. It contains the same options with which you can configure most of the same settings that are available when you create a new style.
The additional options in the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box can take you even further into automating the formatting of your documents. It doesn’t matter if you want to add styles to the Quick Style gallery as you go, update styles automatically when you make formatting changes on the fly, or opt to modify the document template that’s keeping track of your current Quick Styles, you can use these options to customize the way Word uses Quick Styles to streamline your document formatting tasks.
By default, the styles you create in the Create New Styles From Formatting dialog box are based on whichever style was in use when you accessed the dialog box. A good way to understand a based-on style is to think of it as a parent style. When you base a style on another style, it means that your style uses all of the settings of the based-on style plus whatever modifications you make to the style, unless you explicitly define the settings. This provides you with the capability to link or “chain” styles together.
For example, if you create a new style based on Heading 1, and your new style is defined with only the Center paragraph alignment format, your new style inherits any changes made to Heading 1 but always maintains the Center format—even if Heading 1 uses the Left alignment format. Although this maintains consistency in related styles, this option can also create a mess if you’re not careful. It’s for this reason that many people use Normal or (No Style) as their based-on style. If you want more insight into the difference between basing a style on the Normal style or (No Style), see the section titled The Relationship Between Document Defaults, the Normal Style, and (No Style).
Some styles are predictable—you can predict which style elements are likely to precede or follow them 99 percent of the time. For example, most of the headings in your documents are probably followed by Normal text, or perhaps your documents use a figure number element that is almost always followed or preceded by a figure caption. You can take advantage of style predictability and save yourself many unnecessary formatting steps by configuring settings for paragraphs that follow specific elements.
When you specify a style to be applied automatically to a paragraph following a paragraph that itself has a particular style, you specify that you want to apply that style after you press Enter at the end of the current style (paragraph). You can easily specify a style for a subsequent paragraph as you’re creating a new style. To do so, select a style in the Style For Following Paragraph list box in the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box.
If you don’t specify a subsequent paragraph style, Word continues to use the current style for subsequent paragraphs until you choose another one.
The Automatically Update option can be one of the most dangerous options in the dialog box if used incorrectly or the most beneficial if used correctly. When you allow a style to automatically update, every formatting change you make to text to which the style is applied automatically changes the style definition, and all text formatted with the style updates before your eyes. While this sounds like a marvelous idea and one that could help tremendously with formatting tasks, consider applying the bold format to a portion of a paragraph and finding other paragraphs in your document have also changed to bold. Better yet, if another group of styles is using that style as their based-on style, a good portion of your document could end up bold as well—except, of course, those words that are already bold. They will no longer be bold because bold is a toggle format and, as previously noted in the section titled Style Fundamentals, two bold formats result in a not-bold format. (You might encounter similar results if you do not use a little thought when setting the Style Based On option.)
By default, when you create a new style in Word, it is added only to the current document. Similarly, if you modify a built-in style, that modification applies only to the existing document. But you have the option to add the style, or modifications, to the template attached to the current document if you choose. You can easily add a new style to a template by selecting the New Documents Based On This Template option (in the Create New Style From Formatting dialog box or the Modify Style dialog box) before you click OK.
Keep in mind that when you add a style to a template, you add the style to the template that’s attached to the current document. Because Normal.dotm is the default template in Word, the Normal template is used for a great number of documents. If the style you are adding is not a style you commonly use, consider creating either a Quick Style Set or, depending on your needs, a custom template instead, as described in Chapter 4.
Note
If you add to or modify a style in the document template, you are prompted to save changes when closing the file. However, if the document template is the Normal template, you are prompted to save changes to the Normal template only when you exit Word if the Prompt Before Saving Normal Template option is turned on in the Save section on the Advanced tab in Word Options.
If you inadvertently add a style to a template, including the Normal template, you must open the template to delete the style or use the Import/Export button in the Manage Styles dialog box to display the Organizer and use it to delete the style. For more information on the Organizer, see Chapter 4.
So now that you’ve got all these styles in various Quick Style Sets and templates, what will you do with them all? Knowing how to manage the styles you use is an important part of keeping your documents efficient and extensible. You can inspect your formatting using the Style Inspector and the Reveal Formatting task pane. In addition, you can use Manage Styles to coordinate the management of your styles by setting defaults, editing style settings, choosing recommended styles, and restricting the ways in which styles can be changed in your document. The following sections provide detailed descriptions of all these tools.
To open the Style Inspector, click the Style Inspector button in the Styles pane (press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S to open the Styles pane). You can keep the Styles Inspector open even if you close the Styles pane or change views. Figure 12-7 shows the Style Inspector.
The Style Inspector distinguishes Paragraph Formatting and Text Level Formatting along with any additional direct formats that might be applied. It also provides four buttons for clearing formats. Each button uses the same icon, but they each serve a different purpose as described in the following list:
Reset To Normal Paragraph Style. Resets the paragraph to the Normal style but leaves any character styles or direct font formatting.
Clear Paragraph Formatting (Ctrl+Q). Clears any direct paragraph formats listed in the Plus area, such as an indent that is not defined in the style.
Clear Character Style. Clears a character style and resets font formatting to the Default Paragraph Font but leaves any direct font formatting.
Clear Character Formatting (Ctrl+Spacebar). Clears any direct font formatting listed in the Plus area, such as a font that is not defined in the style.
If you like to see all the different settings that go into a style you’ve selected, you’ll like using the Reveal Formatting pane. You can display the pane by clicking the Reveal Formatting button in the Style Inspector or by clicking text in the style you want to inspect and pressing Shift+F1. Figure 12-8 shows the Reveal Formatting pane.
Figure 12-8. The Reveal Formatting pane lists the format settings for the text at the insertion point.
The Reveal Formatting pane lists all of the format specifications for the selected text. The format items are grouped into three basic categories:
Font. This group includes format settings that apply to the characters used in the document, including the font type and size, as well as the proofing language for the selected text.
Paragraph. This group contains format settings for aspects of the paragraph, such as the selected paragraph style, text alignment, indentation settings, and paragraph spacing (before and after spacing, as well as line spacing).
Section. This group includes the format settings you use to control larger portions of the document, including overall margin settings, page layout choices, and paper selections.
You can make formatting changes to the text at the insertion point directly from the Reveal Formatting pane by simply clicking the blue underlined link to open the relevant dialog box.
Another great time-saving option available to you in the Reveal Formatting pane is the ability to compare and contrast similar text styles with subtle differences. Have you ever studied a heading and wondered why it doesn’t look quite right when compared with another heading in your document? You can use Reveal Formatting to compare the formatting differences for you, as shown in the following graphic.
To display this type of comparison, follow these steps:
Select the first text selection and press Shift+F1 to display the Reveal Formatting pane.
Select the Compare to another selection check box.
Choose the second selection. The Reveal Formatting pane shows every formatting difference between the selections.
If you want to modify either of the formats, click the blue underlined links in the task pane to open the relevant dialog box.
Another way to keep an eye on styles while you work is to enable the option to track inconsistent formatting. When this option is turned on, a blue wavy line appears under text that uses direct formatting similar to a style used in your document.
Use Word Options to turn this feature on or off. On the File tab, click Options then click Advanced. In the Editing Options area, select the Keep Track Of Formatting check box. Select the Mark Formatting Inconsistencies check box, and then click OK.
Note
The contextual spelling feature also uses a blue wavy line to identify possible contextual spelling errors. For more on this feature, see Chapter 10.
If you want a kind of one-stop shop for the various decisions you need to make as you manage the styles in your documents, the Manage Styles dialog box is that place. You use the Manage Styles dialog box to limit style formatting; choose the styles you want to be displayed in the Styles pane and Apply Styles dialog box; edit styles; and more.
You display the Manage Styles dialog box by clicking the Manage Styles button at the bottom of the Styles pane. The dialog box (see Figure 12-9) offers four different tabs and an array of options you can use to fine-tune the way styles operate in your current document. The four tabs you’ll work with in the Manage Styles dialog box are described in the following list:
Edit. The Edit tab, shown in the following graphic, is where you can modify all styles—even those that are not currently displayed in the Styles pane—and allows for the creation of new styles. Additionally, the Sort Order option includes the ability to list styles By Type and Based On style.
Figure 12-9. The Manage Styles dialog box is where you can make a variety of choices about the way styles operate in your document.
Note
The Import/Export button opens the Organizer, which allows you to copy styles between documents and templates, rename, and delete styles. For more information on using the Organizer to copy styles and between templates and documents, see Chapter 4.
Recommend. The Recommend tab, shown in the following graphic, is where you can create a recommended list of styles that are used when displaying recommended styles in the Styles pane. This tab allows you to specify the sort order of recommended styles, hide styles from view until they are used, or always hide the styles. Those assigned with the same priority will sort alphabetically.
Restrict. Using the Restrict tab (shown in the following image), you can restrict specific styles as well as block Theme switching and Quick Style Set switching. For example, if a document must be limited to include only the styles for Headings 1 through 3, then you can restrict all other heading styles. The Limit Formatting To Permitted Styles option restricts formatting to only those styles that are marked as restricted and disables direct formatting, which includes font formatting such as Bold, Italic, and Underline; a character style must be used instead. This option can also be password protected and is the same as using the Limit Formatting Styles To A Selection Of Styles option found on the Restrict Formatting And Editing pane, which can be displayed using the Protect Document button on the Review tab.
Set Defaults. The settings on the Set Defaults tab, shown in the following image, control the Document Defaults for font and paragraph formatting in a document. If you do not explicitly define a format in a style, the Document Defaults are used. For example, assume that you create a new style and do not change the default font. If you later change the font for the Document Defaults, your style also uses the newly defined font. Additionally, when you save a Quick Style Set, the current Document Defaults are also saved and defined as the Document Defaults for the Quick Style Set. For more information about this feature, see the next section, titled The Relationship Between Document Defaults, the Normal Style, and (No Style).
Tip
You can set additional font and paragraph formats for the Document Defaults that are not displayed on the Set Defaults tab. To set additional font defaults, click the dialog launcher in the Font group on the Home tab to display the Font dialog box. To set additional paragraph defaults, click the dialog launcher in the Paragraph group on the Home tab to display the Paragraph dialog box.
For either dialog box, set your desired formats, click the Default button at the bottom of the dialog box, and confirm the changes when prompted.
In versions of Word prior to 2007, the Document Defaults were hard-wired into the application and could not be changed. Word 2007 brought the switch to Office Open XML formats, which paved the way for one of the biggest advancements in styles: the Document Defaults in Word 2007 and Word 2010 are now stored in the documents (and templates) themselves and can be modified easily. Understanding the role that Document Defaults play is crucial in creating well-behaved documents. It can help you determine what you should use for your based-on style and perhaps help you avoid certain style nuances that can occur if your styles are not set correctly.
An interesting style aspect that many Word veterans might never have realized is if you do not modify the Normal style in a document or if the formats for the Normal style match those of the Document Defaults, the Normal style isn’t actually defined—it’s an “empty” style and the Document Defaults are used instead. That being the case, in Word 2010, if you do not modify your Normal style and if you base your styles on the Normal style, essentially you are using the Document Defaults, and changes made to the Document Defaults are reflected in the Normal style.
The exposure of Document Defaults also changes the behavior of using (No Style) as your base style from previous versions. Like the Normal style, (No Style) also looks to the Document Defaults to obtain base formats. If your formats are not explicitly defined in your style, then those from the Document Defaults are used.
For example, assume that you base a style on (No Style) and do not use a font that is different from the font defined in the Document Defaults. If you later change the font in the Document Defaults, that change is also reflected in the style. It might be interesting to note that the behavior of (No Style) hasn’t actually changed from previous versions; previously you simply did not have access to the Document Defaults and were unable to make formatting modifications.
At this point, you might be wondering whether you should ever modify the Normal style if you are using it as your based-on style. This answer depends on the complexity of your document. If it is a simple letter, memo, or small report, modifying the Normal style should not be an issue. However, you might find it easier to leave the Normal style unmodified, use it as your based-on style, and then set the base formats using the Document Defaults. If your document or template maximizes the power of styles, it’s better to leave the Normal style untouched. You should modify the Document Defaults instead.
Keyboard shortcuts give you an easy way to apply the styles you want while you’re creating your document. This means that you don’t have to go from keyboard to mouse and back again; you can simply keep your hands on the keyboard and style away to your heart’s content. You can use a built-in shortcut or create a keyboard shortcut that you can press whenever you need a particular style. Table 12-1 lists commonly used keyboard shortcuts for a few built-in styles.
Table 12-1. Keyboard Shortcuts for Built-in Styles
Style | Keyboard shortcut |
|---|---|
Normal | Ctrl+Shift+N |
Heading 1 | Ctrl+Alt+1 |
Heading 2 | Ctrl+Alt+2 |
Heading 3 | Ctrl+Alt+3 |
Demote Heading Level | Alt+Shift+Right Arrow |
Promote Heading Level | Alt+Shift+Left Arrow |
To create your own keyboard shortcut, follow these steps:
Click the dialog box launcher in the Styles group to display the Styles pane.
Click the arrow of the style to which you want to assign a keyboard shortcut.
Click Modify.
In the Modify Style dialog box, click the Format button and then click Shortcut Key. The Customize Keyboard dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-10.
Press the keyboard shortcut you want to use. If the combination is already in use, the dialog box indicates which feature uses the keyboard shortcut. If the combination is available, the Currently Assigned To label (displayed below the Current Keys list after the keys are pressed) indicates that the keyboard command is unassigned.
In the Save Changes In list box, specify whether you want to save the keyboard shortcut in the global Normal template, in another template, or in the active document only (thereby not adding the shortcut to any template).
Click Assign, Close, and OK to close the Modify Style dialog box.
Test your keyboard shortcut to confirm your results.
To remove the keyboard shortcut, follow the same steps for adding a shortcut to open the Customize Keyboard dialog box. In the Customize Keyboard dialog box, select the shortcut in the Current Keys area, use the Save Changes In list to specify where to implement the removal, and then click Remove.
This chapter showed you how you can use Word 2010 styles to control the formatting in your documents and introduced you to the tools you can use to manage your styles and inspect text formatting. The next chapter offers another way to view and organize your document content—using Outline view to review and arrange sections in a way that best fits the information you’re sharing.