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Taming
Unruly Formatting in Your Word 2002 Documents
Have you ever received a Microsoft Word 2002 document that contains dozens of
font styles and sizes, and then been asked to make it consistent? Or put
together a long document from smaller documents that other people have worked
on? Or just accidentally wound up with too many different formats in the same
document?
If your document is suffering from the "snowflake syndrome," in
which almost no paragraphs look alike, below are some strategies that may help
you.
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Control how text is pasted from other documents.
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View and change formatting using the Styles and Formatting task
pane. |
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Review formatting details and change formatting in the Reveal
Formatting task pane. |
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Compare similar formatting — in which two words or paragraphs look
almost the same — and then apply identical formatting. |
Controlling how text is pasted
The first strategy is prevention. You can keep unruly formatting from
creeping into your document as you copy and paste text from other documents that
are formatted differently. If your document already contains unruly formatting,
then the other strategies in this article may help you fix it.
If the text is formatted differently in documents or other resources that you
are pasting from, then the key is to control how text is formatted when you
paste it. The Paste Options button in Word 2002 enables you to format
pasted text like the text that's already in your document, so that you keep the
formatting in your document consistent.
Determining formatting options
The Paste Options button appears just below your pasted
selection after you paste the text. When you click the button, a list appears
that lets you decide how the information should be pasted into your document.
The available options depend on the type of content you are
pasting, the program you are pasting from, and the format of the text where you
are pasting.
For example, if you are pasting list items near a list, you can
decide whether the pasted text is included in the list or is pasted as a new
list. If you are pasting into a paragraph, you can decide whether the text keeps
its original formatting or is formatted like the surrounding text.
If you are pasting data from Microsoft Excel, you can specify
whether or not you want to link the data and how you want to format the data.
Viewing and changing formatting and styles
The next strategy is to view and adjust your document's formatting in the Styles
and Formatting task pane. From the task pane, you can see what formatting is
applied throughout your document, select text with the same formatting, and
reapply formatting you've used elsewhere in the document for a more consistent
look.
You can open the task pane by clicking Styles and Formatting on the Formatting
toolbar. As you click in the text throughout your document, its formatting
description appears in the task pane.
You can show different types of formatting in the task pane. Two settings are
the most helpful for cleaning up your document, and you can adjust these
settings by using the Show box. The Available Formatting setting
allows you to view the formatting available in the document. It includes
formatting that is applied in your document, styles you've created, and some
common headings. The Formatting in Use setting shows only the formatting
that is currently applied in your document.
Let's say that you receive a document that contains a mismatch of paragraph
formatting. As you click through your document, you see that eight paragraphs
are formatted as 11-point Arial, five paragraphs are formatted as 10-point Times
New Roman, and two paragraphs are formatted as 11-point Verdana.
You'd like to format all paragraphs as 11-point Arial, which is the default
or Normal style, for your document. Unfortunately, your paragraphs are scattered
throughout your document, so you're concerned that it would be time-consuming to
identify which paragraphs contain what formatting.
By using the Styles and Formatting task pane, you can easily select
text that contains the same formatting. Then with just a click you can
select all the text that's formatted as 10-point Times New Roman, and then with
another click, apply your default Arial font style.
As you identify formatting that you don't want to keep, and then apply your
default Arial style, you'll notice that your document is looking more consistent
and fewer formatting descriptions are listed in the task pane.
 Reapply
formatting
This procedure quickly applies formatting that you've used elsewhere in
your document.
- If the Styles and Formatting
task pane is not open, click Styles
and Formatting on the Formatting
toolbar.
- Select the text that you want to format.
- In the Styles and Formatting
task pane, click the formatting that you want to apply.
Reviewing formatting details
As you work with your document, you may want details about the formatting
that's applied. While you can point to a formatting description in the Styles
and Formatting task pane to see a description, you can review even more
details by using the Reveal Formatting task pane.
The pane shows many details about your text, such as the font, paragraph and
line spacing, styles, and language. You can expand or collapse these details as
needed to focus on the specific details you want to view.
While viewing the details, you can double-click the blue, underlined
information to display dialog boxes in which you can change the formatting.
Reveal
formatting
- On the Format menu, click Reveal
Formatting.
- Select the text whose formatting you want to review.
The formatting information will appear in the Reveal
Formatting task pane.
- Do any of the following:
- To change any formatting properties, click the text with a blue,
wavy underline, and then change any options you want in the dialog box
that appears.
- To determine the formatting source, such as whether the formatting
comes from a style, select the Distinguish
style source check box.
- To show formatting marks, such as paragraph marks and tabs, select
the Show all formatting
marks check box.
- To format a text selection like the text that surrounds it, select
the text. In the Selected text
box, click the arrow, and then click Apply
Formatting of Surrounding Text.
Comparing similar formatting
From the Reveal Formatting task pane, you can also compare paragraphs
with similar formatting. Let's say you're working on a legal contract, and the
text in one paragraph looks almost, but not quite, the same as text in another
paragraph. Instead of scanning the details about both paragraphs to determine
what's different, you can quickly compare the formatting of the two paragraphs.
Compare
the formatting of two text selections
You can compare two text selections to see which formatting properties are
different. This is helpful when two paragraphs don't look exactly the same,
but you're not sure which properties are different.
- On the Format menu, click Reveal
Formatting.
- Select the first instance of formatting you want to compare.
Under Selected text in the Reveal
Formatting task pane, an example of your formatting will appear.
- Select the Compare to
another selection check box.
- Select the second instance of formatting to compare.
An example of the formatting will appear in the second box under Selected
text.
- Under Formatting differences,
any differences between the two selections will be described.
When the two selections are exactly the same, No
formatting differences will appear instead of the description.
- To format the second selection so that it matches the first selection,
click the arrow next to the second box under Selected
text, and then click Apply
Formatting of Original Selection.
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