WORD

Creating Styles

The format painter is useful for occasionally formatting text but if you have certain styles of text that you use regularly it is a good idea to create a style.  To create a style, click on the Format drop-down menu and choose Style . A window appears as below containing a list of the Styles already available.

Click on the New button and you will be able to create a new style.

To make construction of your style easier you can base it on an existing style and then fine-tune the settings using the Format button. Each option under the Format button shown above brings up a window like the ones you would normally see when formatting fonts, borders, etc so you can set the formats for your font. If you choose the style to be a Character style rather than a Paragraph one then the only format options available will be Font, Border and Language. 

When you have chosen the settings for your style, click OK and you will be returned to your Styles window, don’t forget to give your new style a meaningful name before you do this. Your new style will now appear in the list on the left-hand side of the window. 

When you create a style it is only stored in the document you are working on.  If you want the style to be available in other documents you must add it to the Normal.dot template that Word uses as the basis for new documents.  To do this, click on the Organizer button in the Style window and a window will appear as shown below, listing the styles in the current document on the left and the styles in the Normal.dot template on the right. Highlight a style in one list and use the Copy button to copy it over to the other list. If you want to delete a style completely you can use the Delete button.  If a style in one of the lists has the same name as a newer style you are copying you can use the Rename button to give one of the styles a new name before the other one is copied.