Ok so this one was obscure and I want to make sure that I document it so that I remember for any future occurrences. Today I was asked to diagnose a strange MS Word problem. This copy of MS Word was automatically changing the formatting for the whole document whenever formatting was changed for a new paragraph. The person was pressing Ctrl+E to center the top of the document, then the person hit enter twice and hit Ctrl+L to left justify the next paragraph. After hitting Ctrl+L, the document changed the centered text to left justified text with the new line.
I was perplexed, I looked in Auto text, I looked in Auto formatting, I even wondered if a rogue macros was to blame. But then I found out it was just an automatic style update that was to blame. I found this at the Microsoft Office website under Troubleshooting Using Styles and Applying Formatting.
A style has changed unexpectedly.
Automatic updating may be turned on for the style With automatic updating, a style is updated when you make additional changes to it, so that certain elements in your document, such as headings, are consistent. You can turn off this setting by modifying the style. If the Styles and Formatting task pane (task pane: A window within an Office application that provides commonly used commands. Its location and small size allow you to use these commands while still working on your files.) is not open, click Styles and Formatting on the Formatting toolbar. Right-click the style that you want to change, and then click Modify. If the Automatically update check box is selected, clear it.
Your style may be based on another style that has changed. When a base style (base style: The underlying or original style on which other styles in a document are dependent. When you change a formatting element of the base style in a document, all other styles that originate from the base style will also reflect the change.) changes, so do all the styles that are dependent on it. For example, if you change the font in the Normal style (Normal style: The default paragraph style used in documents based on the Normal template (Normal.dot)) to Arial, Microsoft Word changes the font for the styles used in footnotes, headers, footers, page numbers, and other text based on the Normal style.
If you don’t want a certain style to change when you change a base style, make certain that your style is not based on another style, or at least not on the base style that you’re changing. If the Styles and Formatting task pane is not open, click Styles and Formatting on the Formatting toolbar. Right-click the style that you want to change, and then click Modify. In the Style based on box, click (no style) or a style different from the base style you’re changing.
The document may be based on a template that changed. If you change the styles in a template (template: A file or files that contain the structure and tools for shaping such elements as the style and page layout of finished files. For example, Word templates can shape a single document, and FrontPage templates can shape an entire Web site.) and then reopen a document based on that template, styles in the current document may be updated, based on their new definitions in the template. If you don’t want the styles in documents based on a particular template to be updated when you open the documents, click Templates and Add-Ins on the Tools menu, and then clear the Automatically update document styles check box.
The template that contains the style definitions may be missing or damaged. If the template that contains the style definitions is missing or damaged, styles in the current document use the style definitions from the Normal template (Normal template: A global template that you can use for any type of document. You can modify this template to change the default document formatting or content.).
It took me forever to find this, but I’m glad that I began to wonder if Styles where the issue. Styles are a handy way of making your text more uniform, and setting a Style to Automatically Update makes it a lot easier to change a mass of text at one time (without writing a macro to do it). But that’s a subject for another day.
littlebrownmouse
Little Brown Mouse 