well, it just goes to show, you should always check the obvious first, before
getting too complicated. I have been struggling with this for some time now
and have just sent a screen dump of my Word screen to a pal - who immediately
suggested I drag the formatting bar on to the line below - when miraculously
the missing 'font' box appeared.

Doh. I hadn't thought of that..........

To be fair, Stefan's suggestion that it might be the 'font' box that was
missing put me on the right track, so many thanks for all your help. Glad I
didn't go interfering with too many settings first though!

"Stefan Blom" wrote:

Are you saying that the Font box is missing from your Formatting
toolbar? In Tools | Customize (Toolbars tab), try to Reset the
toolbar. If that doesn't work, see
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm.

If you are not familiar with templates and styles, you may also want
to take a look at the following articles:

Creating a Template €“ The Basics (Part I)
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customizat...platePart1.htm

Tips for understanding Microsoft Word styles
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styl...sOnStyles.html

Why use Microsoft Word's built-in heading styles?
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numb...ingStyles.html

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


"Gill" wrote in message
...
well, Graham, thanks very much for your input and you are right, I
did have a
check mark against that setting, but it hasn't solved the problem.

Basically, for normal, everyday use (rather than editing documents
using
track changes), in my Formatting Toolbar, I now have what I have
just found
out is a Style and Formatting Task Pane - which is where these
annoying 'I
know better than you do' options appear. I don't want to use it, I
just want
to use the standard formatting tools - i.e. a nice little drop down
box with
the different fonts in it from which I can choose, rather than a box
which
simply shows 'normal', heading 1, heading 2 etc. Apart from anything
else, :
a. I use different fonts depending on the type of document I am
typing, so
there is no such thing as 'normal';
b. the default settings in the S & F TP is not the one I want to use
and I
can't for the life of me figure out how to change this and
c. I like to take control of my own formatting, not have the PC do
it for me.

Thanks in anticipation!

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Difficult to understand what your problem is from this
description, but my
guess is that you have acquired a check mark in tools options
edit
keep track of formatting.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Gill wrote:
I have recently been involved in preparing several documents
using
Track Changes, zapping documents back and forth via Outlook till
we
were satisfied with the results. All of a sudden, my standard
default
settings on Word changed so that instead of having Ariel font 10
as
my normal font, I now have a drop down menu showing Normal +
Courier,
Heading 1, 2, 3 etc and font 12. When I type anything and amend
its
size etc, this appears as a new option on this drop down menu.
I
guess this must be something to do with me using Track Changes
and
maybe Windows XP, trying to be 'helpful' has amended my
settings.

I don't want it like this! I want to set up my Word settings so
that
I can have my old view back, with a choice of Font types
available in
the menu bar rather than via format/font, with Ariel as the
default
setting, and can change my font size myself instead of having
the
computer tell me what I can and can't do! I just can't see
anywhere
in the Windows help pages how to get rid of this annoying
feature.
Please advise.