Here's the scenario: You've just opened a new document from a client, and you italicize the first paragraph, which is a short quotation introducing the chapter. But suddenly *all* of the chapter text is italicized. What in the world is going on?
You've just bumped into Word's "Automatically update" feature for styles. (This is different from the "Automatically update document styles" feature discussed in last week's newsletter.) If you don't know about the "Automatically update" feature, you can spend hours trying to adjust formatting, only to have everything in sight messed up beyond belief.
To turn the feature off, do this:
1. Click the "Format" menu.
2. Click "Style" (in Word 2002, that's "Styles and Formatting").
3. Click the style that's giving you fits (such as Heading 1). (In Word 2002, click the drop-down arrow to the right of the style in the Task Pane.)
4. Click "Modify."
5. Remove the checkmark from the box labeled "Automatically update."
6. Click the "OK" button.
7. If necessary, click the "Close" button.
Now, when you modify some formatting in your document, you'll change only the local selection and not everything that's formatted in the same style. But really, you should avoid using directly applied formatting anyway. Using paragraph and character styles is much more efficient--the True Way--and avoids a multitude of problems.
So what's the point of the "Automatically update" feature? It allows you to modify styles without drilling down, down, down through the Styles dialog. Well hey, that's good! It means you can change formatting directly, see the result immediately, and have the styles updated automatically to reflect that formatting. Pretty neat!
So here's my recommendation:
1. If you're *designing* a document, use the "Automatically update" feature with a bunch of junk text to set your styles exactly the way you want them (be sure to select the whole paragraph before changing the format). Once you've got them set, turn off "Automatically update." Then copy the styles to your real document, or save the junk document as a template that you attach to your real document. You can learn more about this here:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704544112
2. If you're *writing* or *editing* a document, make sure the "Automatically update" feature is turned off. You'll have a happier day.
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READERS WRITE
Rhana Pike (Rhana@ctc.usyd.edu.au) wrote:
"I was interested to read the tip on automatic updating of styles. A related issue is the box that appears sometimes when I try to apply a style to a paragraph: it says something like 'Update the style to match selection?' (I can't get it to appear now). Is there a way of getting rid of this or applying a default, because I set styles through the menu and never want to update the style to match the selection."
Here's how this works: When you apply direct formatting to a paragraph (such as formatting it in bold with CTRL + B), and then immediately click the paragraph style (such as Heading 1) in the Styles list on the Formatting toolbar, Word asks if you want to:
1. Update the style to reflect recent changes, or
2. Reapply the formatting of the style to the selection.
If you click option 1, Word will modify the style to match the manual formatting you've applied to the paragraph. This is a quick way to modify styles--similar to the technique explained in the main article in today's newsletter.
If you click option 2, Word will override all of that lovely manual formatting you've just done and reapply the existing formatting of the style.
Is there a way to get rid of these options and just apply the style? The only way I know of is not to click the Styles list after applying formatting directly--or, better yet, to avoid using directly applied formatting altogether.
Thanks to Rhana for her question.
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RESOURCES
Mark Pool (mark913@earthlink.net) wrote:
I really like the Google toolbar. It's a free download at
http://toolbar.google.com/
It occupies no more space than the address bar. Whenever I'm online and want to do a search it's always handy. Some of the advanced features are pretty cool, too, such as "Highlight".
Thanks to Mark for this helpful hint.
