atw: Re: Char Char Char Problem in Word

Hi
thought I'd way in on this thread since it's my all time favorite 
pet subject.  Apologies if I'm am covering what everyone else has 
said - have only glanced at a couple of the responses so far and 
have 10 minutes spare to add some words of wisdom.

Macros to clear up char styles are all well and good, but your 
whole document can be reduced to Normal style (ie default 
formatting) if the char styles have taken over.  Reformatting a 
100+ page document is not something you want to do - believe me.

Prevention is better than relying on the cure, and that means 
employing better work practices.

To prevent:
1. Turn off "Keep Track of Formatting"  (see my note re 2007 
below).  This is one cause of char styles.

2. When modifying the formatting of a paragraph - select the whole 
paragraph including the paragraph mark and use a defined style.  
If you don't have a style which has the formatting you need, 
create one.  This is another cause of char styles.

When you select a word in a paragraph, and then apply the style, 
it looks like it is applied to the whole paragraph, but it is 
actually at this time that Word creates a char style - it is a 
character and paragraph style - and the slow descent into hell 
begins.  You won't notice it at first, and won't notice until it's 
too late.

3. When modifying the formatting of part of a paragraph, ie you 
want to italicise a document title, use a character style like 
Emphasis or Strong, not using the options available in the Font 
dialogue.

This is another cause of char styles.

In the main, it is the partial formatting of paragraphs that 
creates char styles.

4. Modifying an outline list once it is defined, corrupts your 
outline lists (ie bulleted and numbered lists) by disconnecting it 
from it's associated list template anchor and eventually it's 
associated style, and also creates char styles.

To use outline lists in your template, define your paragraph 
styles for the required levels ie 1-9, ie List Bullet 1, List 
Bullet 2 etc; Define the numbering for all levels via the first 
level style (ie List Bullet 1).

If you need to make changes after this, you will need to rebuild 
them in a new template.

5. 2007
I am not a 2007 user.  And as such, I have not investigated the 
effect of Keep Track of Formatting from a code perspective which 
reveals the hidden effects of certain functions.  My initial 
instinct is to not use it in any version of Word - it has been the 
underlying cause of the majority of problems long document users 
of Word experience.

What I do know about 2007 is that it just buries the visibility of 
corruption deeper and makes it more difficult to find/see/fix and 
most importantly, avoid.

HTH
Suzy

--


On Tue Dec 16 05:02:36 CST 2008, Daryl Colquhoun 
<atw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> This has been discussed before. You'll probably find that when 
> you turn off style tracking, you have documents with these char 
> char styles in them. A few years ago the list carried a macro by 
> John McGhie to get rid of those rogue styles.
> 
> See
> http://www.freelists.org/post/austechwriter/Word-charchar-its-worse-than-that-Jim,3
> 
> 
> 
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