Any organization worth its salt will have a set of templates designed for
specific purposes, with appropriate styles (and easy ways to apply those
styles) to make it easy for users to create documents in the "house style."
They should not be using Normal.dot as a basis for any documents except
personal, throwaway stuff. For an idea of how to start with just one such
template, see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/Letterhead.htm.
--
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.
wrote in message
ups.com...
In other words, novice users (found in many organizations) are likely
to end up with Normal style throughout their documents. And updating
the Normal style is not a good practice, since many other styles are
based on this style. So we're stuck training our users to remember to
check for any occurances of Normal in their documents and to restyle
them as whatever style they choose for their body text.
Can't there be a better option? Maybe some "best practice" for a
template and set of styles that eases the burden?
- Dennis
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:
1) No. Once you understand how Word does formatting, you will realise
that
what you ask for is impossible.
"Clear Formatting" does exactly what it says it does: it removes ALL
formatting from a paragraph.
However, a paragraph in Word is a very complex object, there are some
properties it MUST have in order to be a valid paragraph, and one of
them is
a "Style".
All formatting in Word is actually a "Style". All of the formatting of
all
parts of a Word document are held at the end of the document, as rows in
a
table or "spreadsheet" if you like.
Each paragraph contains a binary number that indicates which row in the
formatting table contains its formatting properties. Many paragraphs
can
point to the same row, or just part of a single paragraph may have a row
all
of its own.
Normal style is the first row of that table. Row 0. So when you remove
all
formatting from a paragraph, you get "Style 0". The human name for
"Style
0" is "Normal Style".
Hope this helps
On 10/9/06 10:05 AM, in article
,
"
wrote:
Is there an relatively easy method (for novice users) for having Body
Text the default style for a document? Specifically, I'm looking for:
1. Clear Formatting to reset the text's style to Body Text; and
2. the style following other paragraph styles (Headings, etc.) to
default to Body Text instead of Normal.
- Dennis
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Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not
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me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410