10 Minute Guide to Word for Windows 95

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Creating and Modifying Styles

In this lesson, you'll learn how to create your own styles, and how to modify existing styles.

Creating a New Style

You are not limited to using Word's predefined styles. In fact, you can create new paragraph and character styles to suit your own specific needs. Follow these steps to create a new paragraph style:

1. Find a paragraph that you want the new style applied to.

2. Format the paragraph as desired-in other words, with the formatting that you want included in the style definition.

3. With the insertion point anywhere in the paragraph, activate the Style box by clicking it or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+S.

4. Type in the new style name and press Enter.

In step 4, be sure not to enter the name of an existing style. If you do, that style's formatting will be applied to the paragraph and the formatting changes that you made will be lost. If this happens, you can recover the formatting by issuing the Edit Undo command.

Here's how to create a new character style:

1. Select Format Style to display the Style dialog box.

2. In the dialog box select New. The New Style dialog box is displayed (Figure 25.1).

Figure 25.1
The New Style dialog box.

3. Pull down the Style Type list and select Character.

4. Select the Name box and type in the name for the new style.

5. Pull down the Format list and select Font. Word displays the Font dialog box.

6. Specify the character formatting that you want in the new style, then select OK to return to the New Style dialog box.

7. Select OK, then select Close.

Modifying a Style

You can change the formatting associated with any paragraph style. When you do so, all text in the document that has the style assigned will be modified. Here's how:

1. To modify a paragraph style, select a paragraph formatted with the style. To modify a character style, select text (at least one character) that has that style assigned. The style name will be displayed in the Style box on the ribbon.

2. Make the desired changes to the text's formatting.

3. Be sure that the original text or paragraph is still selected.

4. Click the Style box on the Formatting Toolbar, and then click anywhere in the document window.

5. Word for Windows displays the Reapply Style dialog box. Be sure that the Redefine the style using the selection as an example? option is selected.

6. Select OK. The style is redefined with the new formatting.

Modifying Styles--Another Method

Here's an alternative for modifying existing styles:

1. Select Format Style to display the Style dialog box, which is shown in Figure 25.2.

Figure 25.2
The Style dialog box.


Timesaver Tip: Quick style Press Ctrl+Shift+S twice to display the Style dialog box.
2. In the Styles list, highlight the name of the style you want to modify.

3. Select Modify to display the Modify Style dialog box.

4. Select Format. From the displayed list, select the type of formatting you want to modify. The number of formatting types available on the list depends on whether you modify a Paragraph style or a Character style.

5. Word displays the appropriate formatting dialog box. Make the desired changes, then select OK. You return to the Modify Style dialog box.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 as many times as needed to make all the desired modifications to the style's formatting.

7. From the Modify Styles dialog box, select OK. You return to the Style dialog box.

8. Select Apply if you want to apply the newly modified style. Select Close to return to the document without applying the style. In either case, all text in the document that has been assigned that style will automatically be reformatted with the modifications you just made.

In this lesson, you learned how to create and modify styles. The next lesson shows you how to use automatic formatting.


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