The Trick to Controlling Microsoft Word’s Outline Style Features

Did you ever try making a template for your procedures using Microsoft “Word”?  Templates that use the outlining and style features to set the formatting can act really peculiar, sometimes changing the formatting that you set up. When this occurs over and over — and over — again, it can be very frustrating.  Why is this happening?

The problem is in mixing Word’s formatting widgets and style sheets with Word’s concept of “template”.  Microsoft Word’s implementation of style sheets, template styles, outlining styles, and – in general – anything to do with styles can be rather incomprehensible, even to insiders.  I’m sure the original developers of Word had a defensible rationale for doing what they did at some point, but their model has been corrupted over the years by adding new features, changing features , and integration with Microsoft “Office” over the years.  (Quite a change from 2003 to 2007, wasn’t it?)

What has resulted is a lot of confusion over typesetting terms (e.g., kerning and leading), document structure (headers, footers, indents, headings, etc.), and document layout (fonts, styles, spacing, pagination, widows, orphans, bullets, indexing, ad infinitum).  Add to this changes in usage for desktop publishing, print publishing, and web publishing and most users don’t know what I’m talking about now.

What Is a Word “Template”?

A Word template (a “.dot” file) stores your document structure, layout, font assignments (aka, styles), headers, footers, bullets, list numbering definitions, page definitions, and other typesetting functions found in Word.  A Word template is not about content — it’s about the look and feel of your document (in the case of Bizmanualz, procedure manuals).

Some people may think of Bizmanualz content as a “procedure template”, but that use of the word conflicts with Microsoft’s interpretation.  What we at Bizmanualz are providing are procedure examples — sample procedures. They are not templates according to the Microsoft definition.

In the end, we all want our procedures to have a consistent layout, font, size, etc. — the same “look and feel”.  We want to have a standard format for everyone in the company to follow when writing procedures and when you are done have the formatting the way you expect it to be.

How Do You Lock In a Format So Your Document Doesn’t Revert Back To The Default Settings?

The whole point of a Word template is to create a format that locks your document design, or layout, so it can be used over and over again.  That’s what Word templates are for and that’s what they’ll do when you use them as Microsoft’s developers designed them to be used.  Once you change something, the confusion starts.

At Bizmanualz, we’d love to provide a customized Word template to go along with the sample procedures, but most people who purchase our products don’t know how to use Word templates.  To supply them with document templates would only serve to confuse them.  Currently, we use simple features — like headers, footers, and page numbering — in each of our procedures, yet these often result in technical support calls.

The confusion is related to the way Word objects inherit properties.  Individual text characters inherit properties from words, words from paragraphs, paragraphs from the last paragraph or section or style or document, and eventually the template it originated from.  We use the default template (“normal.dot”, in Word 2003), which is in your template directory; it can be saved under another name, in any directory of your choosing.

But unless you explicitly save your macros, custom toolbars, menus, shortcuts, auto text entries, and all the other formatting information in a specific document template (e.g., my_special_template.dot), they’re stored in the global template, normal.dot.  This means the tools you added to your “special” template are available to all documents on your computer, regardless of what document template is attached to your Word file.

So, even if we did supply a Bizmanualz template, you would have to make sure that that template was the one you used for all of your procedure changes.  If you put files on a server and allow anyone to edit them, they may be using different template files or different versions of the “normal” template.  Remember, the Word templates you used and perhaps changed are on your computer and may be different from the Word templates other people are using.

For More on Word Templates

Bizmanualz sample procedures come with formatting you can use, edit, and change.  If the “auto-formatting” is getting in your way, you can edit the Word template, make the formatting changes as you type; another trick is to use the “Esc” key to ignore the style inheritance rules.

For more on Word templates, see Microsoft Support for “Frequently Asked Questions about the Location of Templates in Word 2003 or 2007“.  There’s also an excellent discussion on customizing Word templates at the “Word MVP”. site.

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Bizmanualz has been at the forefront of deploying business best practices since 1995 delivering Policies, Procedures and Forms; quality systems implementation; and strategic business process improvement to help business owners achieve the growth and expansion they envision.

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Originally published in 2009 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title The Trick to Controlling Microsoft Word’s Outline Style Features. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com