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Great Tip for Checking Your Document's Styles (Word)
This is a cool tip...it's not mine (and I'm a bit annoyed with myself that I didn't think of it! :) It was given to me by a Program Manager on Word... a long-time favorite trick of hers.
The question that arose was this: What do you do to quickly see which styles are applied in your document and where? All styles, that is, at once -- at a glance. You could select all instances of a style through the Styles & Formatting task pane (if you're working in Word 2002 or later) -- but that's still one style at a time. You could use code in a variety of ways to do this -- but that's not an answer for every user. The suggestions could go on and on, but this one is the nicest I've heard:
If the styles in your document are part of a template... you can make a duplicate template to attach specifically for the purpose of quicky seeing the attached styles. It only takes a second to check! Here's what you do:
1. Create a duplicate of your custom template, adding a unique color of paragraph shading to each style you'll need to check. (If you use the same custom template for many documents, of course you'll only need to create this duplicate template once --then save it for anytime you need to check a document's styles).
2. Attach the duplicate template to the document you want to check.
To do this:
- Go to Tools, Templates and AddIns (in Word 2003, select the Templates tab -- in previous versions, there's no tab to select) and then click the Attach button to open a file dialog box.
- Select your duplicate template with the shading and click Open. You'll see the name and path of your duplicate template in the Templates And AddIns dialog box.
- Check the box labeled Automatically update document
styles, that's directly below where you see the template name and click OK.
The duplicate template will now be attached to your document and you can easily see what styles are applied throughout by their shading color!
When you're done checking, just go back to Tools, Templates And AddIns and re-attach the document's original template -- that's it! Nothing will have been altered. Any direct formatting on styled paragraphs remains in tact.
It's a fabulous way to look for pararaphs that might have incorrect styles applied. Of course, it's particularly handy for long documents. For example, it can be super-handy for troubleshooting a problematic long outline (as long as your outline numbered list is attached to styles, that is) ...
TWO IMPORTANT NOTES:
* Only use this trick if your document's style definitions are part of a template. (Such as the default set of styles used for all documents in your company -- as discussed in my preceding post about setting up a default template.)
If you reattach the original template after checking the styles, but your styles had been customized for the individual document ... you won't get those customizations back!
* When you do this, do work from an actual duplicate of your template. If the newly attached template contains more styles than your original template, those will get added to your document... and it's never a good idea to add unecessary stuff to your document(changing an attached template will not automatically delete existing styles, so the extra styles won't go away when you switch the template back).
If you want to try it out to see how it works, download these quick little sample files I made:
Sample Document
Original Template
Duplicate Template
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