Word's Style Area

If you use styles to format text in Microsoft Word (which you should), the style of the currently selected paragraph is displayed in the Style dropdown list on the Formatting toolbar. To see what style is applied to a paragraph, you can click the paragraph and look at the list on the toolbar.

Wouldn't it be nice, though, if you could see all of the styles applied to all of the paragraphs on your screen all at the same time? Well, you can. You just have to display Word's Style Area. Here's how:

1. Open a document that contains a bunch of styled text.

2. Make sure your document is displayed in Normal view (click View > Normal). The Style Area isn't accessible in Print Layout (Page) view (but it is in Outline view).

3. Click the "Tools" menu.

4. Click "Options."

5. Click the "View" tab.

6. In the box labeled "Style area width," enter 1 inch or the equivalent.

7. Click the "OK" button.

Now, on the left side of your screen, you'll see the Style Area. In the Style Area, to the left of the first line of each paragraph, you'll see the name of the paragraph's style. Pretty slick!

You can change the size of the Style Area under Tools > Options > View, or simply by using your mouse to move the vertical line between the Style Area and the body of your document. If you've got lots of long style names, make it bigger.

Need to modify one of the styles listed in the Style Area? Just double-click it to open the Style dialog.

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READERS WRITE

Martha Kohl (mkohl@state.mt.us) wrote:

"I've encountered a weird problem. The author put notes in his manuscripts using Word's automatic note numbering system. So far, so good. However, in this particular book, we won't be using notes. I have tried deleting the notes as I came across them in the text, but while the note numbers disappear in the text, the notes are still there. I can't get rid of them. Any suggestions?"

I replied:

"I suspect that the author has revision tracking turned on, right? If so, there's a bug in Word that keeps deleted notes from actually going away. The only way around this is to make the tracked revisions permanent. Then the struck-out notes will disappear."

Thanks to Martha for her question.

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RESOURCES

LaShay Canady wrote:

Here are resources I use as a Virtual Assistant.

http://www.freetranslation.com/

helps to translate a website, phrase, or word into a different

language

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

helps to tell time for various clients in various time zones

http://www.mailwasher.net/download.php

An excellent anti-spam tool that is FREE!

Please note that MailWasher isn't available for Macintosh. If you're a Mac user and know of a similar program for Macintosh, please let us know.

Thanks to LaShay for the helpful tips.