Lesson 2 - Styles
Are y'all having fun with macros yet? Is it safe for me to come out from hiding now?
One of the main reasons I wanted y'all to learn about macro is you can use them in all MS Office
programs and for all sorts of different projects, not just your manuscript. However, if it's your
rough draft – macros can be awesome.
This week we're gonna talk about Styles. Yes, I know we all have different styles but what I'm
talking about are the Styles you find on the Home tab of the Ribbon. Have y'all ever really
looked at them? Have any of you tried them out? Have y'all experimented with them?
The Styles were created by MS to make our lives easier by having preset designs with which to
keep our documents uniform, whether it contains a doc, presentation, or spreadsheet. The great
thing about styles is that they can also be modified to suit your needs.
Because macros consist of programming and programming can contain viruses, many publishers
will not open a document containing a macro unless it's from a trusted source. The same should
apply to you. Never ever open a document unless you were expecting it and trust the sender.
That will dramatically decrease the threat of viruses to your computer.
Please don't scream at me. Yes, y'all struggled with last week's lesson. But think of how proud
you felt when you created a MACRO! And you should feel proud. However, I'm going to stay
behind this wall for a while until I feel safe enough to come back out lol. Just remember, y'all
learned not only about macros but what sections are (which are safe to send to publishers) and
other types of breaks.
Margins are the biggest pains to deal with in a document, especially when a publisher requires
that chapter headings be at different points on the sheet than the rest of the text. Unfortunately
there's no shortcut for changing your margins. Using the section breaks still makes it easier.
So what about styles? What good are they? If you haven't really looked at the styles section of
the ribbon go ahead and do so now. In fact, click on the expansion arrow in the bottom right
corner. The great thing about MS Office 2007 and later you are able to hover over styles and
such and see the changes without actually having your document change to those unless you
click on it to confirm. As you see from doing this the font, alignment, font size, and other
formatting options are all different. If you notice when first opening Word (unless you've already
fixed this) the default font and size Word uses is Calibri 11 pt. and the spacing between
paragraphs is 1.5 (if I remember right). Rather than having to change all this every time you open
up Word you can create a style to be your new default.
1. Select a style within the styles section that closely resembles what you want your
document to look like.
2. Right-click on it.
3. Select Modify
4. A dialog box will open that provides you with all sorts of options.
a. Name – pretty simple – give it a name. I chose "Default" to keep it easy on me.
b. Style Type – click on the list arrow to see all the types. Generally I use paragraph
style for my default but you see other options to create for other styles.
c. Style Based On – unless you're creating a style for say, a TOC, go with No
Spacing for now.
d. Style for following paragraphs – select default unless this is an occasional style,
say for a TOC or bulleted list.
e. From here you can go to the formatting section – select the type font and the font
size as well as the color of text.
f. At the bottom left you see a list arrow that allows you to change various
formatting, such as the paragraph (single or double-spaced? Extra padding
between paragraphs?), tabs, etc. Take note – there is also an option to create a
SHORT CUT KEY you can use rather than hunting it down in your styles section.
g. After fixing the formatting to your liking, make sure the boxes for Add to Gallery,
Automatic Update are checked. If you plan on using this style in future
documents, be sure to check the box for New Documents Based on this Style.
h. Click on OK.
Congratulations you've just created a style. Now, look at the Style pane that opened when you
clicked on the expansion arrow. At the bottom you have 3 icons – New Style, Style Inspector,
and Manage Styles. There's also the word "options". For now, we'll focus on the icons.
New Style – remember step 3? This opens the same dialog box.
Style Inspector – click on that to open up the inspector pane. If you have more than one style in
your ms, you can see them here. And if you have more than one style in your ms, say a TOC or
whatever, and your ms is going all wonky on you, you can use the style inspector to quickly go
through your document to verify everything in the styles is kosher.
I've mentioned TOC (Table of Contents) a couple of times. Remember in the olden days when
you had to finish the document first then go back and type in the page numbers? Well, if you
have one of the newer versions of Word it is now simpler using styles. Create a style for your
chapter headings. Doesn't have to be complicated or anything. Then go back to where you want
the TOC to go, select the References tab, click on the list arrow of Table of Contents, select one
of the preset or create your own style, click OK. You can update the TOC simply by clicking
within it and chose entire table.
Don't forget to cut the tails off your questions – and please – send questions 
Ann Allen