The Problem: all of the styles have morphed into a style called "default
paragraph font para char"

Have a major document (MS Word 2003, Professional version / OS is Win XP)
that will need editing, etc for the rest of its long life. Created styles for
it that worked like a charm. Finished/published it 2 weeks ago. Looked at it
today and every style has morphed into a strange style called "default
paragraph font para char" that I've never seen before. However, the doc still
looks exactly the same as before. Several of my backups/revisions have the
same problem. None of my other documents have this problem.

I've never seen such a thing. Microsoft Knowledge Base has no clues for me
(that I can find). What happened? What can I do?

Do you have "Keep track of formatting" checked on the Edit tab of Tools |
Options? If so, what happens if you clear the check box?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Sandra Salstrom" Sandra wrote in
message ...
The Problem: all of the styles have morphed into a style called "default
paragraph font para char"

Have a major document (MS Word 2003, Professional version / OS is Win XP)
that will need editing, etc for the rest of its long life. Created styles
for
it that worked like a charm. Finished/published it 2 weeks ago. Looked at
it
today and every style has morphed into a strange style called "default
paragraph font para char" that I've never seen before. However, the doc
still
looks exactly the same as before. Several of my backups/revisions have the
same problem. None of my other documents have this problem.

I've never seen such a thing. Microsoft Knowledge Base has no clues for me
(that I can find). What happened? What can I do?

You did it! It worked. Wow! Why?

I had figured it was a history of crashing/recovering without deleting temp
files, and having a changed normal.dot. So, when I saw your advice (and it
worked!), I had just deleted all temp files I could get my hands on, and I
was about to replace normal.dot with a pristine version (I must have clicked
"yes" sometime or other to a dialog box asking me if I want to change the
template). However, I'm not having any luck overwriting that normal.dot with
another one. Any advice on that?

Thanks, Susan!

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Do you have "Keep track of formatting" checked on the Edit tab of Tools |
Options? If so, what happens if you clear the check box?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Sandra Salstrom" Sandra wrote in
message ...
The Problem: all of the styles have morphed into a style called "default
paragraph font para char"

Have a major document (MS Word 2003, Professional version / OS is Win XP)
that will need editing, etc for the rest of its long life. Created styles
for
it that worked like a charm. Finished/published it 2 weeks ago. Looked at
it
today and every style has morphed into a strange style called "default
paragraph font para char" that I've never seen before. However, the doc
still
looks exactly the same as before. Several of my backups/revisions have the
same problem. None of my other documents have this problem.

I've never seen such a thing. Microsoft Knowledge Base has no clues for me
(that I can find). What happened? What can I do?

Suzanne,
I was able to replace Normal.dot. I am very confused, though, about why I
was able to work so long on this doc with "Keep track of formatting" on and
it only recently became unruly. Aside of this, what is "default paragraph
font para char"?

More important, can I still use this file? Should I create a new file with
some kind of new formatting for this document?

thanks
Sandra

"Sandra Salstrom" wrote:

You did it! It worked. Wow! Why?

I had figured it was a history of crashing/recovering without deleting temp
files, and having a changed normal.dot. So, when I saw your advice (and it
worked!), I had just deleted all temp files I could get my hands on, and I
was about to replace normal.dot with a pristine version (I must have clicked
"yes" sometime or other to a dialog box asking me if I want to change the
template). However, I'm not having any luck overwriting that normal.dot with
another one. Any advice on that?

Thanks, Susan!

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Do you have "Keep track of formatting" checked on the Edit tab of Tools |
Options? If so, what happens if you clear the check box?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Sandra Salstrom" Sandra wrote in
message ...
The Problem: all of the styles have morphed into a style called "default
paragraph font para char"

Have a major document (MS Word 2003, Professional version / OS is Win XP)
that will need editing, etc for the rest of its long life. Created styles
for
it that worked like a charm. Finished/published it 2 weeks ago. Looked at
it
today and every style has morphed into a strange style called "default
paragraph font para char" that I've never seen before. However, the doc
still
looks exactly the same as before. Several of my backups/revisions have the
same problem. None of my other documents have this problem.

I've never seen such a thing. Microsoft Knowledge Base has no clues for me
(that I can find). What happened? What can I do?

There is a difference between "styles" and "formatting." In Word 2002,
Microsoft introduced the Styles and Formatting task pane, which seems to
reflect an admission of defeat, a concession that most Word users will never
be persuaded to use styles. So whenever you add direct formatting to Normal
(or any other style), Word creates a "formatting" listing of Normal+Bold,
Normal+18 point, Italic, or whatever. The idea is that you can use these
collections of formatting like styles, reapplying them as needed to other
paragraphs. They also, if you do use styles, tend to serve as a reminder
that you're not using them "correctly," that is, that you probably need to
either update the style to match the new formatting or create a new style.
If you don't want to see these "formatting" listings, however, then you
clear the check box I mentioned.

Enter the "char char" bug: Whenever you apply a paragraph style to just part
of a paragraph (intentionally or, more often, unintentionally), Word applies
it as a character style, so that you end up with, say, a Normal paragraph,
part of which is formatted in Heading 1 Char. This bug was somewhat
corrected by SP1 for Office XP IIRC.

The Default Paragraph Font (as explained at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/DefParaFont.htm) is just the
underlying font applied to a paragraph as part of the style; it isn't a
specific font, just the font defined by the style. Reapplying the DPF
character style is, in effect, the same thing as stripping off any direct
font formatting (by using Ctrl+Spacebar).

Here's where it gets murky, as I can't quite see any scenario that would
result in "default paragraph font para char," which looks like it's trying
to be both a paragraph and a character style.

I'm not sure what to suggest doing with your document. If all your
paragraphs have been formatted strictly with styles and have no direct
formatting applied, you could Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Q, and Ctrl+Spacebar, but this
would remove *all* direct formatting, both paragraph and character
formatting, so it's pretty drastic and probably not necessary. You can also
probably delete the "default paragraph font para char" style, but I'm not
sure what repercussions that might have, either.

You could treat the document as corrupt (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm), or you could carefully
rebuild it from the template (create one if you haven't already). Starting
with a fresh document based on the template, copy and paste portions of the
original document in, keeping an eye on the Styles and Formatting task pane
to see if new styles or formatting show up. If they do, Undo to remove the
pasted text and hope for the best. If worst comes to worst, you can paste as
Unformatted Text and reapply your styles.

I would not advise this amount of work if you hadn't said that this document
was going to have a long life and need to be edited a lot. In such a
situation it's probably worth the effort to get it as clean as possible.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Sandra Salstrom" wrote in
message ...
Suzanne,
I was able to replace Normal.dot. I am very confused, though, about why I
was able to work so long on this doc with "Keep track of formatting" on
and
it only recently became unruly. Aside of this, what is "default paragraph
font para char"?

More important, can I still use this file? Should I create a new file with
some kind of new formatting for this document?

thanks
Sandra

"Sandra Salstrom" wrote:

You did it! It worked. Wow! Why?

I had figured it was a history of crashing/recovering without deleting
temp
files, and having a changed normal.dot. So, when I saw your advice (and
it
worked!), I had just deleted all temp files I could get my hands on, and
I
was about to replace normal.dot with a pristine version (I must have
clicked
"yes" sometime or other to a dialog box asking me if I want to change
the
template). However, I'm not having any luck overwriting that normal.dot
with
another one. Any advice on that?

Thanks, Susan!

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Do you have "Keep track of formatting" checked on the Edit tab of
Tools |
Options? If so, what happens if you clear the check box?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Sandra Salstrom" Sandra wrote in
message ...
The Problem: all of the styles have morphed into a style called
"default
paragraph font para char"

Have a major document (MS Word 2003, Professional version / OS is
Win XP)
that will need editing, etc for the rest of its long life. Created
styles
for
it that worked like a charm. Finished/published it 2 weeks ago.
Looked at
it
today and every style has morphed into a strange style called
"default
paragraph font para char" that I've never seen before. However, the
doc
still
looks exactly the same as before. Several of my backups/revisions
have the
same problem. None of my other documents have this problem.

I've never seen such a thing. Microsoft Knowledge Base has no clues
for me
(that I can find). What happened? What can I do?

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. For the time being, I've created a pdf and
will decide later what to do.

One more question: in the last few days, I have run into two more people at
my company who have the exact same style problem cropping up on them -- with
the exact same name "default paragraph font para char". We've all discovered
the problem in the last few days. One had opened my doc on their machine to
take a look at it, the other hadn't.
Perhaps a virus? Perhaps a common occurence that has only recently become
"common"?
This morning I downloaded anything suggested for Office / Word 2003.
thanks, Suzanne,
Sandra

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

There is a difference between "styles" and "formatting." In Word 2002,
Microsoft introduced the Styles and Formatting task pane, which seems to
reflect an admission of defeat, a concession that most Word users will never
be persuaded to use styles. So whenever you add direct formatting to Normal
(or any other style), Word creates a "formatting" listing of Normal+Bold,
Normal+18 point, Italic, or whatever. The idea is that you can use these
collections of formatting like styles, reapplying them as needed to other
paragraphs. They also, if you do use styles, tend to serve as a reminder
that you're not using them "correctly," that is, that you probably need to
either update the style to match the new formatting or create a new style.
If you don't want to see these "formatting" listings, however, then you
clear the check box I mentioned.

Enter the "char char" bug: Whenever you apply a paragraph style to just part
of a paragraph (intentionally or, more often, unintentionally), Word applies
it as a character style, so that you end up with, say, a Normal paragraph,
part of which is formatted in Heading 1 Char. This bug was somewhat
corrected by SP1 for Office XP IIRC.

The Default Paragraph Font (as explained at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/DefParaFont.htm) is just the
underlying font applied to a paragraph as part of the style; it isn't a
specific font, just the font defined by the style. Reapplying the DPF
character style is, in effect, the same thing as stripping off any direct
font formatting (by using Ctrl+Spacebar).

Here's where it gets murky, as I can't quite see any scenario that would
result in "default paragraph font para char," which looks like it's trying
to be both a paragraph and a character style.

I'm not sure what to suggest doing with your document. If all your
paragraphs have been formatted strictly with styles and have no direct
formatting applied, you could Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Q, and Ctrl+Spacebar, but this
would remove *all* direct formatting, both paragraph and character
formatting, so it's pretty drastic and probably not necessary. You can also
probably delete the "default paragraph font para char" style, but I'm not
sure what repercussions that might have, either.

You could treat the document as corrupt (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm), or you could carefully
rebuild it from the template (create one if you haven't already). Starting
with a fresh document based on the template, copy and paste portions of the
original document in, keeping an eye on the Styles and Formatting task pane
to see if new styles or formatting show up. If they do, Undo to remove the
pasted text and hope for the best. If worst comes to worst, you can paste as
Unformatted Text and reapply your styles.

I would not advise this amount of work if you hadn't said that this document
was going to have a long life and need to be edited a lot. In such a
situation it's probably worth the effort to get it as clean as possible.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Sandra Salstrom" wrote in
message ...
Suzanne,
I was able to replace Normal.dot. I am very confused, though, about why I
was able to work so long on this doc with "Keep track of formatting" on
and
it only recently became unruly. Aside of this, what is "default paragraph
font para char"?

More important, can I still use this file? Should I create a new file with
some kind of new formatting for this document?

thanks
Sandra

"Sandra Salstrom" wrote:

You did it! It worked. Wow! Why?

I had figured it was a history of crashing/recovering without deleting
temp
files, and having a changed normal.dot. So, when I saw your advice (and
it
worked!), I had just deleted all temp files I could get my hands on, and
I
was about to replace normal.dot with a pristine version (I must have
clicked
"yes" sometime or other to a dialog box asking me if I want to change
the
template). However, I'm not having any luck overwriting that normal.dot
with
another one. Any advice on that?

Thanks, Susan!

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Do you have "Keep track of formatting" checked on the Edit tab of
Tools |
Options? If so, what happens if you clear the check box?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Sandra Salstrom" Sandra wrote in
message ...
The Problem: all of the styles have morphed into a style called
"default
paragraph font para char"

Have a major document (MS Word 2003, Professional version / OS is
Win XP)
that will need editing, etc for the rest of its long life. Created
styles
for
it that worked like a charm. Finished/published it 2 weeks ago.
Looked at
it
today and every style has morphed into a strange style called
"default
paragraph font para char" that I've never seen before. However, the
doc
still
looks exactly the same as before. Several of my backups/revisions
have the
same problem. None of my other documents have this problem.

I've never seen such a thing. Microsoft Knowledge Base has no clues
for me
(that I can find). What happened? What can I do?

[CWilliams]

I also have the problem of my styles displaying as "default paragraph" when
work at home in Word 2003. (This doesn't happen in my older version of Word
at my office.) My documents are formatted strictly using styles. The
formatting is OK-just the style name displays as "default". My work-around
is to delete the default paragraph style (in the Styles/Formatting list).
Then the style names display properly. I have to do this every time I open my
documents in Word 2003. It's a pain but at least the style names display
properly!