How to create a style in Microsoft Word 2000

Microsoft Word has styles! You can create styles and format documents much more quickly. It's easy!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer
• Microsoft Word 2000

1. Open a document using Microsoft Word. On the formatting toolbar there is a style box (it probably says Normal and has a dropdown arrow.) The keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+S will put your cursor here.

2. Type Block Text and hit Enter. The selected paragraph indents will change to 1 inch on each side. Click in the box again and type Normal and hit Enter. The paragraph will go back to no indents. This is the magic of styles!

3. Each paragraph in a document should have a style applied. Apply the same style to all paragraphs that should have the same formatting. If your entire document has a 1 inch first line indent, use a body text style. If you later decide you'd like to use a .5 inch first line indent, you can change the style and all paragraphs with this style will change.

4. Click Format-Style. When the Style box appears, click New. In the New Style box type the name of the style. It should describe the format of the style. For example, a style called Title Bold Itals would probably be bold, centered and italicized.

5. All styles should be based on Normal. Make sure Normal is selected from the Based on dropdown. If you base styles on eachother, they both will change when you make changes to one. (Sometimes useful, but not recomended as a general rule.) Make sure Paragraph is selected from the Style Type dropdown. *Character Styles will be discussed in another eHow.)

6. Select a style from the Style for following paragraph box. If each title in a document will be followed by a body text paragraph, set the style to perform this automatically.

7. Check the Add to Template checkbox if you would like the style to be available for use in other documents. (Creating a template will be discussed in another eHow.)

8. Check the Automatically Update checkbox if you would like the style to change each time a paragraph with that style applied is changed. If this is checked, dragging the first line indent of a body text paragraph from .5 to 1 inch, all paragraphs with that style applied will change. This is not recomended most of the time, but again sometimes useful.

9. Click the Format dropdown to begin defining your style. (If you need help with this step, more detail is available in another eHow document.)

10. When you're finished click OK. Now when you type or select this style in the Style Box the paragraph will take on the formatting. You can modify font, indents, line spacing, tabs and numbering.

Tips & Warnings

• Brushing up on keyboard shortcuts can make tasks in Word much easier and faster.
• If you don't know how to do something, look it up using Mircosoft Office Help. It usually works!

Resources

• Microsoft Office Website

[evgnspaces]

on 5/21/2009 I haven't used styles in Word yet, I will have to try it.