Formatting in Word

Dammo

Hi

I can't find an answer to this anywhere. When I highlight text in word and select a format change, e.g. Bold, it changes the entire document to bold. Pressing Ctrl + z returns the rest of the text to normal and leaves the highlighted part bold.

This can't be normal, surely? There's probably a simple solution but as I say I can't find anyone who's experienced this. Weird.

1.

Dammo wrote: »

Hi

I can't find an answer to this anywhere. When I highlight text in word and select a format change, e.g. Bold, it changes the entire document to bold. Pressing Ctrl + z returns the rest of the text to normal and leaves the highlighted part bold.

This can't be normal, surely? There's probably a simple solution but as I say I can't find anyone who's experienced this. Weird.

Try hitting ctrl+b to bold the selected text instead?

BostonB

Using word is all about knowing how to use styles. Basically if you change a style, you may change everything else thats in the same style. You might have a heading style, a paragraph style, a highlight style. Etc.

If you want or use word, you need to learn how to use styles.

Dammo

Thanks for the replies.

I hear what you're saying but you know if you want to make changes after you've typed something, highlighting is the option. Everything changing just seems wrong. It happens with almost all formatting, bullets, etc. Just seems weird to me.

Kevster

I'm an experienced Word user but have never come across this. There are so many settings in Word though, such that I think you should just restore them (the settings) to their original values. Go to the 'Tools' menu, and then click 'Customize'. You should be able to use the 'Reset' button there to rest the various options to their defaults. Alternatively, just reinstall the thing,...

1.

Kevster wrote: »

I'm an experienced Word user but have never come across this. There are so many settings in Word though, such that I think you should just restore them (the settings) to their original values. Go to the 'Tools' menu, and then click 'Customize'. You should be able to use the 'Reset' button there to rest the various options to their defaults. Alternatively, just reinstall the thing,...

Sounds like the OP is better googling "reset word"

See that having to be done before. Just set every thing back to default/normal.

BostonB

I'm surprised none of you have seen this before. I'm guessing the document is made up of cut and paste styles each one inheriting from the other. Change one style and you change them all. Usually its the Normal Style as people don't know what styles are so just ignore them, then can't understand why whole paragraph or the entire document changes instead of one word they've highlighted.

Everything in Word has a Style even if you don't realise you are using them. If all you been doing is changing fonts, and formatting, you've been editing the styles without realising it. You can clear the styles which sets them all back to normal. Then re-reply the styles (formatting) properly.

Can't believe no ones mentioned Styles. Its the main feature of Word.

Capt'n Midnight

reinstalling word to solve a formatting problem won't help if your problem stems from templates

find and rename Normal.dot , it's the normal template, the next time you start word a default one will be recreated

homer911

The document does seem to be inheriting old formatting

I would create a brand new document from the default template, copy and paste-special (unformatted text) to the new document and then format it correctly.

BostonB

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

reinstalling word to solve a formatting problem won't help if your problem stems from templates

find and rename Normal.dot , it's the normal template, the next time you start word a default one will be recreated

Note:

If you do this, you lose any customisations, like macros, or styles you've saved to the normal.dot.

BostonB

homer911 wrote: »

The document does seem to be inheriting old formatting

I would create a brand new document from the default template, copy and paste-special (unformatted text) to the new document and then format it correctly.

There is no such thing as unformatted text in word. All text in word inherits a style. By default the normal text style. If you clear all styles this is what everything gets. You don't format text in word, you format the style. The style is applied to the text. Change the format of the style, ALL text in that style changes.

Make a cup of tea and spend 15 mins playing around with styles. It will save you hours of grief later on. Start by turning on the document map, and inserting headings, then gettting headings to appear in the document map, and not in the document map. If most people spend some time doing this they'd have far less hassle with word. As a light bulb goes off in your head as why word works the way its does. When looking at why a piece of text is misbehaving, see what style it is. Also turn on paragraph marks/hidden characters and see what style they have. Because is you start in one style everything else following is in the same style unless you change the style.

Capt'n Midnight

BostonB wrote: »

Note:

If you do this, you lose any customisations, like macros, or styles you've saved to the normal.dot.

Hence the rename

But at least you can rule out Normal.Dot as the problem , always worth a try if word don't start normally

BostonB

Good point, missed that.

homer911

BostonB wrote: »

You don't format text in word, you format the style.

Incorrect. Any piece of text can be formatted how you want, regardless of the "style" applied to it. It is possible to "reapply" style to text where the style formatting has been over-written.

The style is applied to the text. Change the format of the style, ALL text in that style changes.

Correct, assuming the text style is updated, which can be done through Style Manager. Changing the format of any piece of text, regardless of the style applied to it, does not by default change the style

Alun

homer 911 is right ... I'm guessing the OP has the style associated with the text he's modifying (probably Normal, since most styles are ultimately derived from this) set to Auto Update, which is AFAIK not the default for any of the standard styles. It might have got set by accident, or by some add-on.

OP, if it's Word 2003, go to Format > Styles and formatting, then right click on the Normal style and select Modify.... from the context menu. Then just untick the Auto update box down in the bottom right hand corner.

For Word 2007, haven't a clue, I'm afraid, but it'll probably be similar.

BostonB

My bad. Maybe thats what I'm thinking of.

I remember having text of normal, then making it bold and the style changing to normal + bold etc. Not changing the default style but creating a new one. I just tried it in 2007 and it doesn't do this. So maybe it was in an earlier version or maybe it was a setting that used to be set. But I know I used to have to fix peoples documents and they would be chock full of automatically created styles. My solution was always to clear all styles and then reapply the styles to the text, using just the default styles, or the companies inhouse styles.

I'm a bit lost with word 2007 as they changed the names of lots of features/options, often they do the same things as before but its not that obvious.