[Alan Ward]

Although I have set up "styles" in the Style sheet it appears that most of
the text in a file carries the "Char" style and I will not allow me to change
it to another style.

[Cindy M.]

Hi ?B?QWxhbiBXYXJk?=,

Although I have set up "styles" in the Style sheet it appears that most of
the text in a file carries the "Char" style and I will not allow me to change
it to another style.

The "Char" suffix means that Word automatically created a character level style
and linked it to the paragraph style of the same name (without "Char").

Most often, this happens when you select some text in a paragraph - but without
the last paragraph mark included - then apply a paragraph style. Word decides
you want to apply the font formatting from the paragraph style to the characters
and creates a character style. It links it to the paragraph style so that any
changes made to the one style are reflected in the other, maintaining the "look"
of the document.

This is a very difficult situation to get out of. Best, and in the end fastest,
is to copy the entire document and use Edit/Paste Special with "plain text" to
put it into a new document. Recreate the styles in this document and reformat -
being VERY CAREFUL to not select individual characters when applying paragraph
styles. You can select entire paragraphs - that's OK.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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