Hi Jan

My experience is that once Word 2002 is fully patched (that now means
Service Pack 3), you may still see (eg) "Heading 1 Char", but you won't see
(eg) "Heading 1 Char Char Char".

But that only applies to *new* documents or documents based on a template
that is itself not suffering from the Char Char infestation. Applying the
service packs won't change old documents; but it will prevent new documents
from being a problem.

And just to reiterate the problem: In Word 2002 or Word 2003 if you select
*part* of a paragraph and apply a paragraph style just to that part, then
Word creates a "Char" style that is a kind of pseudo-paragraph style,
pseudo-character style. It does this because it needs to distinguish (say)
"Heading 1", the real paragraph style that has properties that only apply to
a paragraph style (eg line spacing), from "Heading 1 Char", the more-or-less
character style that does not have paragraph-type properties.

If, however, you select *all* of the paragraph, or just click in the
paragraph and select nothing, then no "Char" style is created.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word


"Janicek" wrote in message
...
You mention having the most recent service pak. My machine has Ver5.1.2600
Service Pack 2 Built 2600. Near as I can tell, this is the latest service
pack. Yet the Char problem persists. So, aside from the other settings
that
you mention in your reply to Mary, should I assume that the problem will
not
be further resolved in XP?

Jan

"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macinto" wrote:

Hi Mary:

The Char Char bug bites worst in Word 2002 (Word XP). However, there is
a
service pack available that alleviates some of the problems. Check that
the
bad machine has the most recent service pack applied.

The Char Char bug is normally caused by a combination of "Keep track of
formatting" and users running in Page Layout mode with their paragraph
marks
turned off.

If the user selects text in a paragraph, but does not select the
paragraph
mark at the end of it, then applies a style, Word creates a new style
containing only the Character formatting properties and applies that
instead
of the style chosen. The new style has the same name as the style the
user
chose, with "Char" appended at the end.

This new style is known as a "Linked Style". It appears in the style
task
pane along with the original style, and unless the task pane is set very
wide, looks identical.

If the next time the user wants to format something, they choose the Char
style instead, but they still have not selected a whole paragraph, Word
creates another linked style: "Char Char". And so on.

To fix this, you must first turn OFF "Keep track of formatting" and
secondly, restrict the Task Pane to showing only the original styles.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/as...844491033.aspx

You must then restrict the Task Pane to showing only the styles you want
used: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/as...447461033.aspx
And http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/as...349211033.aspx

I was hoping there would be a description of how to restrict the list of
styles displayed there. Shauna has an excellent write-up he
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/sfpa...ttingPane.html

Hope this helps


On 13/3/06 5:06 PM, in article ,
"Mary"
wrote:

Recently documents based on one of our regularly-used Word templates
have
been beset by the styles changing to Char Char. The affected documents
seem
to originate from one user's computer. For example, on Friday I worked
on a
document where all our usual styles were correctly applied. He then
made
some minor changes and returned the document to me. When a paragraph is
selected almost anywhere in that document, the style box on the toolbar
and
the selected style in the formatting pane show Char Char. In this 70
page
document, the only place where the original styles are still listed
seems to
be the header, footer and TOC. The attributes of this Char Char style
are
Normal + Font: (Default) Verdana, 10pt, Line spacing: Exactly 12 pt,
Space
After: 8pt. The attributes of our Normal style a Font: (Default)
Arial,
11pt, English (U.S.), Left, Line spacing; single, Space After: 6pt,
Widow/Orphan control. The paragraphs that are listed as Char Char still
look
as they should stylewise -- Heading 1's, bullets, etc. look as they
should
and there is no sign of Verdana in the document. I tried using the Find
and
Replace function to root out the style. I tried searching for style
Char
Char (which was listed in Style dropdown) but Word says "search item
not
found."

When I first encountered one of the affected documents last week, I
tried to
overcome it by pasting all content into a new document based on
template
using paste special as unformatted text but the Char Char still
infested the
new document. I think it may have come over with a graphic.

I've googled the MS Word newsgroups to see if anyone has a solution for
this
issue but thus far I've found none. In our case, we are seeing all the
styles being replaced by Char Char rather than the more frequent
problem of
having Char appended to Style names. Any suggestions on how to remove
the
Char Char from documents and how to stop it occuring in the future?

We are using Office 2003 on Windows XP.



--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not
email
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