[Lefty]

I am one of a group of technical editors that edit documents which come from
different authors from different locations with different versions of Word.
Once we receive these documents, we edit them on Dell desktop computers with
the same Windows XP operating system and the same Office Suite 2003.

My question and problem deals with the styles created in Word not holding
throughtout the document. For example, I created a style to center a figure
title in 12 point Times New Roman with 12 points of space below. While
working in the document on Monday, it held. (I de-selected automatically
update and selected add to template.) But come Tuesday, when I opened the
document again, the style changed to 8 point Arial left align without any
input from me. And this is only the beginning. There are many more
"gremlins" in Word creating nightmares for me. For instance, once I was
successful is taming the style beast and was able to print the document in
all it's glory. I put the document on our shared drive for my co-workers to
review. When they opened the file on their computers, they found that the
formatting had changed dramatically, i.e., heading 1 was -0.5" from the left
margin and the text was not justified. We have been fighting this for 3
months now and cannot find a definiative answer to this problem. Word seems
to "create" its own styles on the fly and no matter how many times we correct
the styles by modifying or making new styles. Word does what it wants to
whether it's going back to its default settings or changing the existing
styles.

I really need help to solve this mistery!

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In addition to the "Automatically update" setting in the Modify Style
dialog, make sure that "Automatically update document styles" is not checked
in Tools | Templates and Add-ins, though if you checked "Add to template,"
that shouldn't be an issue, either. I assume you're using a specific
document template and not Normal.dot.

Also make sure that "Define styles based on your formatting" is disabled
(Tools | AutoCorrect Options | AutoFormat As You Type). And you do realize
that if you paste in text from another document, it may bring its style
definition with it?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Lefty" wrote in message
...
I am one of a group of technical editors that edit documents which come
from
different authors from different locations with different versions of
Word.
Once we receive these documents, we edit them on Dell desktop computers
with
the same Windows XP operating system and the same Office Suite 2003.

My question and problem deals with the styles created in Word not holding
throughtout the document. For example, I created a style to center a
figure
title in 12 point Times New Roman with 12 points of space below. While
working in the document on Monday, it held. (I de-selected automatically
update and selected add to template.) But come Tuesday, when I opened the
document again, the style changed to 8 point Arial left align without any
input from me. And this is only the beginning. There are many more
"gremlins" in Word creating nightmares for me. For instance, once I was
successful is taming the style beast and was able to print the document in
all it's glory. I put the document on our shared drive for my co-workers
to
review. When they opened the file on their computers, they found that
the
formatting had changed dramatically, i.e., heading 1 was -0.5" from the
left
margin and the text was not justified. We have been fighting this for 3
months now and cannot find a definiative answer to this problem. Word
seems
to "create" its own styles on the fly and no matter how many times we
correct
the styles by modifying or making new styles. Word does what it wants to
whether it's going back to its default settings or changing the existing
styles.

I really need help to solve this mistery!