Make sure that you are looking at the Templates and Add-Ins dialog for the
particular problem document. There are a couple of places in Word with the
option to automatically update styles. It is only the one in the Templates
and Add-Ins dialog that causes this problem.

Otherwise, it might be a corrupt document. Doesn't seem likely, though.

You could try, in Word 2003, saving one of the documents that does work
under a new name and then copying the contents from one of the broken
documents into it. What happens?
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome!
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"ISMGR" wrote in message
...
The option to "Automatically update styles" was not checked, so that's not
the problem.

There are about 24 user-defined styles in the one document that are used
to
control headings, indents, etc. The documents in question are used for
Architectural specifications & need to be formatted a certain way. The
styles
actually came within the documents & were not created in-house. When I
open
the document in 2003, the styles are gone from the document. Several other
similar documents can be opened in 2003 & have all of the user-defined
styles
appear. It is a very odd situation.

"Cindy M -WordMVP-" wrote:

Hi ?B?SVNNR1I=?=,

I have several documents created in Word 2000 that contain user-defined
styles. When the documents are opened in 2003, the styles are missing &
the
formatting of the document is changed. If the document is re-opened in
2000,
it is back to being fine. Is this a setting or a glitch? Need to know
soon
before we upgrade any more computers with the latest version.

Mmmm. first thing that comes to my mind is that the option to "update
styles
automatically" is activated in Tools/Templates and Addins? If that's the
case,
deactivate this in Word 2000 and the document should open "normally" in
Word
2003.

If that's not what's causing the behavior, could you describe the
style(s) that
are "getting lost" when you open in Word 2003?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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