Using Styles and a Customized Template.

Why use styles?

Styles support good organization of content.

Styles is an organizational and visual display tool that allows for categorization of information. Styles offer the ability to customize the look of any assigned style, allowing great flexibility.

Styles make documents more flexible and powerful.

Styles allow documents to be organized in a hierarchical fashion (like an outline) which lets the user then automatically generate a Table of Contents and make global document changes. Styled documents can also be used to create logical HTML documents and tagged PDF documents with bookmarks for navigation.

How to Use Styles with Outline View

Using styles is easy when paired with Outline View. Both can be used separately but together they are especially powerful. Outline View is a View option that creates a different type of interface for interacting with a Word document. It adds another toolbar to your Word interface to make taking advantage of the powerful tools easier.

Start Outline View, Go to View > Outline.

Additional tools appear on your menus.
Key features of the Outline View toolbar include:
  • Promote and demote sections using single or double arrows.
  • Help for selecting text - select an entire section by clicking on one part.
  • Expand and contract sections using + and -.
  • Move sections easily and quickly by collapsing section then dragging to new location.
  • Show first line only.
  • Show/hide formatting toggle.
  • Table of Contents (TOC) support.

To Add Styles to a pre-existing Document.

  1. Save your document using another name to preserve your original look. You can keep the original open in another window or print it out to remind you how it looked.
  2. Select all your text (Ctrl A)
  3. Open Task window for Styles and Formatting. Go to Format > Styles and Formatting, or click on the double A icon.
  4. Select Clear Formatting.
  5. Follow instructions below, beginning to assign classifications to your document as if it were a new document.

To Create a Heading 1–Build you outline.

  1. Type your main topic, and select that text.
  1. Open Task window for Styles and Formatting. Go to Format > Styles and Formatting, or click on the double A icon.
  2. Apply the style, “Heading 1” by selecting it from the Styles and Formatting list on the right side of the page, (or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + 1).
  3. The text will now be a level 1 element, with Heading 1 formatting rules.
  4. Your next heading should be a Heading 2, supported with Heading 3, etc.

To modify the way your styles appear:

  1. Open Styles and Formatting Task Pane (CTRL F1).
  1. Select the type of style you wish to change. For example, modify Heading 3 to be Tahoma 12 pt, left-aligned, italic.
  2. Select Heading 3 in the Styles and Formatting Task Pane.
  3. Use right click or the dropdown arrow to get the alternate menu, select Modify. .
  4. From the Formatting dropdown list select “Tahoma.” Select 12 pt, and that the “I” for italic font is also selected. Check that the farthest left multiple-line icon that represents left-aligned text.
  5. Select “Automatically update” checkbox, and select the OK button.

To Attach a Predefined Template

Note: If adding a downloaded template, the “.dot” template file must be saved to the Microsoft application data templates folder (example path C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates, where username corresponds to your log-on name).

To attach a template to a new document...

  1. Open Microsoft Word.
  1. Select File > New, and the new document task pane will open.
  2. Go to the Templates section and choose “On my computer…”
  3. From the available templates pick the one you wish to use.
To attach a template to an existing document…
  1. With your document open, go to Tools, Templates and Add-Ins
  2. The Go to Tools > Templates and Add-ins
  3. Use the “Attach” button to browse to the location of your template.
  4. Check the “Automatically update document styles.”
  5. Select “Okay” to close the Templates and Add-ins dialogue box.

Note: Sometimes Word has difficulty with this process, and may not update the content.Opening a new document with the appropriate Template, then pasting the content from the document is a quick fix for this problem. As with any computer program, remember to save, and save often.

Styles that Transfer to other formats

Table 1 Using Word Styles to Create other Formats

Type of Doc / Support for Metadata
(File > Preferences) / Support for Headers and footers / Support for Styles / Support for URLs
PDF / yes / yes / yes / yes
HTML / Title only / no / yes / yes

Document author: Cath Stager-KilcommonsPage 1 of 4Last revised: 1/3/2007 3:23 PM

C:\Documents and Settings\cathk\Desktop\forPDI07\session3\Using Styles.doc