Tips, tricks, tools, and techniques for Microsoft Office

Styles work much differently in Word 2007 than in previous versions. That’s in part because there are extra options in the latest version of Word, most particularly the Quick Styles Gallery and Quick Styles Sets.

There are a few terms you’ll have to learn first.

A style is a collection of attributes that you apply to an object in your document (typically you apply them to text). A style can include a variety of characteristics, such as the font, font size, font color, and alignment. For example, you might define a style as “Arial font, 12 points, red, centered” -- or just call it “red12” for short. The name is completely up to you.

In Word 2007, you can preview the styles that you’ve defined or are pre-defined within Windows from a “gallery” -- a large window that gives you a sample of each style, like an art gallery gives you a view of several paintings. The Style Gallery is located at the top of your screen on the Home tab. To see all the styles, click on the third icon to the right of the style gallery (it’s the one with the horizontal line and a down-pointing arrow under the line) -- as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

A set is a collection of styles that works as a group on your document. Different documents can have different style sets, but an individual document can only have one style set applied to it. Typically, this style set is the “Default (Black and White)” set.

Creating a Style in Word 2007

To explore how to use styles, let’s work through a simple example. Open a brand new document and type some text. Select a word within this text.

To apply a style to your text:

1. Select the text you want to change -- choose a few consecutive words within the text you just typed.

2. In the Styles group of the Home tab, select the predefined style you want to apply from those displayed in preview mode (along with the style name). For example, click on “Heading 1” which is predefined in Word.

Your text now appears with the properties of the Heading 1 style.

Note that you can hover over a style button in the Style gallery and Word changes your selected text -- it’s like “Print Preview” only for styles. If you move away from the style button, no change is made to the text.

If you don’t see the style you want, it may be because the Style gallery isn’t shown in its entirety (as illustrated in Figure 1), which is often the most useful view. However, you actually have three options when viewing the Style gallery.

Option 1: Look just to the right of the last style in the top row. You’ll see an up and a down arrow button (these let you scroll through the styles in the Style gallery) until you see the style you want.

Option 2: Look to the right of the last style in the top row. Underneath the up and down arrow buttons is a down-pointing arrow with a line over it. Click that button to open the full Style gallery (as shown in Figure 1).

Option 3: If the style you want isn’t shown, click on the arrow at the bottom-right corner of the Styles group. This opens the Styles dialog box preview window, which shows a complete list of all the styles (in alphabetical order). Double-click on the style you want to apply.

Defining a Style Set

Whether you were aware of it or not (and most users aren’t), you’ve been using a collection of styles assigned to the Default style set. Let’s save that collection and use it as the basis for a new style set we’re going to create.

To create a custom style set:

1. From the Home tab, in the Styles group, choose the Change Styles button. From the drop down, choose Style Set.

2. At the bottom of the drop-down menu, choose “Save as Quick Style Set.”

3. Enter a new name. We chose “TOL Newsletter” (without the quotes) because we want to create a style we will use for all articles we write for the newsletter.

4. Press Enter. You are now working with a collection of styles assigned to the name you entered in Step 3 -- in our case, we’re now working with styles assigned to the set called TOL Newsletter.

Let’s now change a style within our custom Quick Style Set we just created:

1. Choose a style from the Styles Gallery, right-click on it, and choose Modify. For example, let’s change the Heading 1 style, which is displayed on the first line of the Styles gallery. After right-clicking on the Heading 1 (or style of your choice) button in the Styles group, choose Modify, and change the font size (for example, make it 14 points).

2. If the style isn’t in the Styles Gallery, click on the arrow at the bottom-right corner of the Styles group. This opens the Styles dialog box. Click on down-pointing arrow just to the right of the style name you want to change and choose Modify.

Our style set now has a different Heading 1 style than other style sets; this Heading 1 style is different than the Heading 1 style in the style set on which we’ve based TOL Newsletter.

You can repeat these steps to customize the existing styles in your style set. When you are done, you might want to see all the styles in your new custom style set. To do so, click on down-and-right-pointing arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Styles group.

This is a very long list. Let’s look only at the styles in your document.

To shorten the list of styles:

1. Click on “Options” at the bottom-right corner of the Styles dialog box (see Figure 2).
   
   Figure 2

2. In the “Select styles to show” field (at the very top of the dialog box that appears), choose “In use.” The list is shortened to display only the styles that are currently assigned to text within your document (see Figure 3). (If you’ve been following our examples, you should see only Normal and Heading1 listed.)
   
   Figure 3

3. Instead of “In use” you can choose Recommended to get a longer (but not all-inclusive) list of the most commonly used styles. Choose “All styles” to see everything.

Let’s display only the “In use” styles (just follow the directions in steps 1 and 2 above).

Adding a Custom Style

So far our styles all come from the default style set that shipped with Word. We’ve modified only one style so far. Now it’s time to add a custom style to your style set.

1. Select some text and apply the formatting you wish to use. For example, select some text in your document, right click your mouse, and make the font red.

2. Right-click on the text, choose “Save Selection as a New Quick Style.”

3. In the “Create New Style from Formatting” dialog box, enter a name (we used the name “Red” -- without the quotes).

4. If you open the Styles box (click the arrow at the bottom-right corner of the Styles group to open the Styles dialog if it isn’t displayed), you’ll see that Red has been added to the list.

5. Note that in the Styles group in the toolbar, Red has been added as a Quick Style. Word assumes that since you’ve just defined this style you’ll probably want to use it again shortly.

Removing Styles from the Gallery

To remove a style from the Quick Styles gallery (the preview boxes in the Styles group of the toolbar), right-click on the icon of that style and choose “Remove from Quick Styles Gallery.” Note that this removes the style from the Styles gallery, but it isn’t the same as deleting the style itself. It may no longer appear in the gallery, but the definition for Red is still kept within your style set.

Getting Rid of a Style

Many times all you need are just a few styles. For example, when preparing the Office letter newsletter, I have no need for headings, page numbers, and tables of authorities or contents. To make styles more useful to me, I decided to cut the TOL Newsletter Style Set down to just the basics. You may also want to get rid of a style you created -- such as the Red style we just defined -- that you no longer need.

Word isn’t very straightforward about letting you delete a style. In trying to figure out how such a simple task should be accomplished, I encountered how Word really works -- and the hassle it makes you go through.

Word behaves inconsistently when it comes to removing styles. You can delete any new style you’ve created (such as Red), and some of the pre-defined styles (Quote, for example), but not all of them (for example, Salutation). That doesn’t mean you can’t delete a pre-defined style, only that you have to know the trick (which takes a few steps).

When you remove a style, text using the to-be-deleted style will revert to the “Normal” style.

To remove a style:

1. Open the Styles dialog box (right-click on the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Styles group in the Home tab).

2. Click to the right of the style you want to remove.

3. If you see the option “Delete [style name]” (where [style name] is replaced by the name of the style you want to delete), you can select it and you’re done. (See Figure 3.)

If the style you want to delete doesn’t have the Delete option, there’s a workaround:

1. Select a bit of text (a single letter or word will do) in your document.

2. Assign the style you want to delete to this text.

3. In the Styles dialog box, click to the right of the style you want to remove. You should now see the option “Delete [style name]”; select that option.

Once you apply the style to text, Word will allow you to delete the style. (Don’t ask us why this is required -- it just is.)

Deleting a Style Set

Microsoft seems to think that once you create a Quick Style set you’ll always want to use it. There is no “delete” option we could find on any menu, but we did find a workaround.

1. Open a document and apply the style set you want to delete to this document.

2. From the Home tab, click the Change Styles icon, choose Style Set, and be sure the style you want to delete is checked.

3. At the bottom of the dialog box, click the “Save as Quick Style Set” option.

4. In the Save Quick Style Set dialog box that appears, right-click on the style set you want to delete and choose the Delete option.

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TOL reader Stan Rose wrote with this question:

I don't know if you are still taking questions for the Web site, but you have been very helpful in the past so I thought I would ask!

In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2003, there was a tool bar option "Web/Address" that gave you the fully qualified address of the file. I first read about that in this newsletter. My question is whether there is an equivalent in the Office 2007 applications. I've hunted all over but haven't found one.

While the Web/Address option no longer exists in Office 2007, we did find macros that work in both Office 2003 and 2007 that help you work with a fully qualified file name (that is, drive, path, plus file name).

The first simple macro places the current document name into the title bar of your document:

Sub ChangeTitleBar()
   ActiveWindow.Caption = ActiveDocument.FullName
End Sub

Stan wrote back that he what he also wanted to do was capture the document name to the clipboard so he could use it in other applications. That got a little trickier, only because VBA doesn’t have a built-in “copy to the clipboard” function.

First, here's the macro code:

Sub PutFileNameOnClipboard() 
  
   Dim MyDataObj As New DataObject
   MyDataObj.SetText ActiveDocument.FullName
   MyDataObj.PutInClipboard 
  
End Sub 

However, you can't use it without a simple modification, which I read about on the Web but could never find directions for. By trial and error I discovered the way:

1. From within the VBA environment, choose Tools/References.

2. If "Microsoft Forms 2.0" isn't in the list so you can check it, use the Browse button and find fm200.dll on your system (it's probably in C:\Windows\System 32).

3. Once you find it, click on that file, which adds it to the Reference list with a check mark already checked.

Now when you execute the code, the full path of your current document should be copied to the clipboard.

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