Change Styles on the Fly

Microsoft Word 2003 Miscellaneous

Summary: Update styles in your Word 2003 documents without going through multiple configuration screens.

Do you often use and change styles in your Microsoft Word 2003 documents? If so, you might find it cumbersome going back and forth between your document and style modification dialog boxes. If you need to change, for example, just the font size used by a particular style, there is a configuration option that lets you modify styles on-the-fly.

1. Click "Tools" - selecting "Options".

2. When the "Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select the "Edit" tab.

3. Check "Prompt to update style".

4. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.

Now, to change a style on-the-fly:

1. Highlight some text in the style you wish to change.

2. Make changes to your text as desired. For example you can change the font size, name, whether the text is bolded or not, etc.

3. Re-select the current style name from the style pull-down.

4. A "Modify Style" dialog box will appear. Here, you can choose to "Update the style to reflect recent changes" or "Reapply the formatting of the style to the selection" (undoing your changes). If you select the former, you can also check a box to "Automatically update the style from now on". When you are done making your selection, press "OK".