If it's any consolation to you, this has been intensively rethought for Word
2007.

--
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.

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
To me, it looks like when the Styles and Formatting task pane was created,
the developers took the opportunity to tuck some buggy/poorly designed
style
functionality out of the way!

Adrian


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
.. .
It's possible even Shauna doesn't know how this works, then (or thought
it
was too complex for users at the level she's targeting). I confess that
my
limited experiments have just resulted in confusion and frustration. I'm
especially confused about why these settings seem to have been
customized
in
Normal.dot, where I make it a cardinal rule never to change any styles
or
other settings. sigh

--
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.

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the link Suzanne. However, my questions are really about how
the
"Format Settings" dialog box controls the lists in the Styles and
Formatting
task pane and this is not really covered. This is all the FAQ says:

"Choose which styles you would like to see listed (in the Show box,
choose
Custom. In the Category box, choose All Styles. Now, tick and un-tick
the
list in the Styles to be Visible box. If you want to save this setting
for
all documents based on this document's template, click the Save
settings
in
Template box. Click OK)"

Cheers,

Adrian

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
To the extent that anyone understands this, I think you'll find that
understanding detailed in
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/sfpa...ttingPane.html

--
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.

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I've spent half an hour trying to work out how the dropdown list
entries
work at the bottom of the Styles and Formatting task pane and I give
up.
I
checked the help file but it really didn't help. The entries on the
list
are
as follows:

-Available Formatting
-Formatting in Use
-Available Styles
-All Styles
-Custom

When you click Custom, the "Format Settings" dialog box appears.
This
dialog
box seems to let you do the following:
1. Define the styles that you want to appear on the Available Styles
list
(from a list of all styles, you select the check box next to each
one
you
want to be shown on the Available Styles list).
2. Define the styles that you want to appear on the All Styles list
(from
a
list of all styles, you select the check box next to each one you
want
to
be
shown on the All Styles list). (I find this somewhat bizarre.)
3. Choose what styles you want to show in the Styles and Formatting
pane
(with Custom showing as the selected list). Note that if you change
to
another list, you cannot get the original list back directly;
instead,
the
""Format Settings" dialog box appears. When creating a custom list
you
start
off by selecting one of the following selections:
-Available styles
-Styles in use
-All styles
-User-defined styles
-Do not show styles

(If you choose Available styles or All styles you are effectively
changing
the associated lists at the same time as described in 1 and 2.)

Is my understanding correct? If so, this functionality really could
do
with
a usability review! If not, please enlighten me!

Also, I don't understand why anyone would click Custom and then
choose
"Do
not show styles"...

...and while "User-defined styles" and "Styles in use" are pretty
clear,
I
have a question related to the latter: I have read various articles
that
claim "Styles in use" is not well named as it also shows styles that
have
been applied to a doc and later removed. Is this still what happens
in
Word
2003?.


Thanks,

Adrian