... in the world of Technical Communication

Using styles can be helpful and maddening all at the same time. Styles, like a css sheet for a webpage, enable you to keep your document formatted consistently.

Recently, I gave a quick presentation about using styles in a new template I created for Architects/Developers for one of my clients. Of all the interesting features I showed them, they were most taken with the way I used images as bullets.

For example:

In the image above, the note icon, arrow icon and triangle icon are all bulleted styles that use a clip art image instead of one of the built-in bullet symbols. Using a bullet style instead of individual clip art images enables you to create callouts more quickly when authoring your document. It also keeps your formatting consistent for each callout (since image placement in Word can be kind of wonky).

Setting up a bullet style to use an image is just like setting up any other bullet style. Instead of using one of the pre-set bullets, you can select a symbol image or your own clipart image (as seen above).

1. Using the Styles and Formatting toolbar, create a New style or Modify an existing style.
2. Click Format then Numbering.
   
   
3. Choose an existing bullet style then click Customize.
   
   
4. In the Customize Bullet List window, you have the option of choosing a Font, Character (symbol) or Picture. Click Picture.
   
   
5. The Picture Bullet window appears. Choose from one of the existing bullet images or click Import to add your own image.
   
   
6. The Add Clips to Organizer window appears. Navigate to the directory where your image is located and select it. Click Add.
   
   
7. You’re returned to the Picture Bullet window. Click the image you just added to select it. Click OK.
   
   
8. In Word 2003, you can set additional properties in the Customize Bullet List window. In Word 2007, set the indent and tab space in the Paragraphs and Tabs windows (accessed via the Format drop-down in the Modify Style window). Click OK twice to return to the Modify Style window.
   
9. Your bullet image will be resized based on the font size for that style. Adjust the font size and color, paragraph spacing, tabs, borders, etc. for the style. When done, click OK to return to your Word document.
   
10. Test out your new style in your document. Make any other modifications as needed.

I’m a big fan of using cross-references in Word documents. While they are time consuming to insert and manage, I generally feel the benefit to the user far outweighs the time (and, often, frustration) I spend inserting and updating. With that said, my biggest complaint was the Word has yet to add a feature that allows you to update all the references in your document at once.

Why would you want to do that, you ask? My simple answer – because I don’t author documents in a linear fashion. I tend to write in chunks. Sometimes it comes out in the correct order. Other times, I’ll work on chapter 3 then 10, then 1, etc. Throughout each section, I generally have a variety of references including table captions, figure captions and cross references. So if I’m adding figure captions, each time I add one to an earlier section, I have to go back and manually update each of the following ones. Word doesn’t do it for me automatically.

A few weeks ago I was searching around online and came across, this fantastic and simple solution! (Who knows why I didn’t ever think of this before. It’s so simple!)

1. When you’re ready to update your captions and references in Word, click Edit then choose Select All to select all the text in your document. (Alternatively, you can use Ctrl-A to do the same thing.)
2. Right-click on the highlighted text and choose Update All.
3. If you have a Table of Contents (TOC) in your document, a pop up window appears asking if you want to update just the page numbers or the entire TOC. Select the appropriate choice then click OK.

Ta-Da! All the captions, cross references and TOCs are updated!

Note: This feature ONLY works for documents created in Word 2007. If you’re working in Word 2003 with a doc that was created in 2007, this should still work. If the doc was created in 2003, you’re stuck with updating each caption and cross reference manually.

I’m a big fan of using styles when I author documents in MS Word. While I’ve generally found Styles to be the easiest way for me to produce consistent formats, I’ve always been frustrated with the non-native functionality of suppressing the “space before” settings when I insert a page break. Thus far, I’ve worked around this issue by using manual spaces (horrible, I know!).

Today, however, I decided I was tired workarounds. There must be a better way! A quick Google search led me to Allen Wyatt’s Word Tips. The article provided background about this issue as well as the location where you can adjust this setting (in Word 2003): Tools à Options à Compatibility Tab à “Suppress Space Before after a hard page or column break.”

Check the box next to the item then click OK.

Ta-da! Now when you insert a page break, the space before is suppressed. This ensures the first line on each page is in the same spot, no matter what type of style it is. (Typically my space before setting varies between headings and body styles. Previously, this resulted in varying alignments at the top of the page if I inserted a page break.)

A couple things to note:

• Allen Wyatt’s article stated that checking this box didn’t fix the problem. He provides some good recommendations for what to do if this doesn’t work for you. Possibly an update to Word between the time he wrote his article and now fixed this functionality so it works as we expect.
• For my environment, I’ve have to specifically set this property for each Word instance I open. It doesn’t seem to carryover to all new instances of Word.
• For Word 2007, the Options window is access through the Office button.