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#11
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Body Text vs Normal
Hi Adrian
Adrian wrote: Regarding having to reformat docs that have text boxes, let's assume that, like you say, the author chose to use Normal for such text boxes. Now, if my template body text is "Body Text" and I don't want Normal in my documents, I'm going to have to reformat these text boxes anyway, right? My (admittedly not very strong) reasoning in this case is: I don't really care whether such a textbox contains Normal if I use Bodytext (and build up many styles upon bt), so if the formatting and/or positioning of those boxes is not plain _ugly_, I will not want to reformat it. I can still change my bt style and this ripples through the document, and if I get really lucky, I don't have to touch the textboxes. But if normal is used for bt also, then the textboxes will most probably reflow differently. And, you are right, when you set up a template and do not want to use Normal, then you have to touch a lot of styles and break the connection to Normal (set it to "none" with a few styles, to bt in some, maybe to a heading style for that hierarchy -- though I've seen this discouraged before, probably of fear of spreading numbering dependencies that way). But this makes sure you have really looked into all styles you intend to use ... ;-) Greetinx Robert -- /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS \ / | MVP X Against HTML | for / \ in e-mail & news | Word |
#12
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Body Text vs Normal
The argument table styles is an especially strong one, but I think the
problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than paragraph formatting. I haven't really paid close attention because I don't use "table styles" but do use specific styles for Table Heading and Table Text. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. "Jonathan West" wrote in message ... Hi Adrian, I have made a standard practice of using Body Text and leaving Normal alone as thoroughly as possible for some years, since I discovered that if you set Normal to have anything other than 0pt paragraph spacing before & after, envelopes tend to come out printed double-spaced. I decided that as I could never tell when someone would attempt to select an address in a document based on any kind of template and print an envelope from it, I was far better off not having to remember to explicitly include all the envelope styles in my templates and set them back to 0pt paragraph spacing. In addition, if you attempt to use Table styles, (I rarely do because many of my customers still require Office 2000 compatibility) I understand the Table style definitions sometimes go all strange on you if the Normal style is set away from the factory default. -- Regards Jonathan West - Word MVP www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk Please reply to the newsgroup Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org "Adrian" wrote in message ... Hi, My company has undergone a few mergers and I am now tasked with standardizing our style sheets across offices. I'd like some advice on this. The templates I have been using till now use "Normal" as body text rather than a specific style called "Body Text" or similar. (One of our offices uses "Body Text".) Most tech authors seem to advocate staying away from Normal, but I don't see any problem with it as long as you follow these simple rules: i. You base any styles you don't want to change if Normal changes on "no style" or another style. ii. If more than one person will work on the same master document, you EITHER give strict orders never to select "Automatically update document styles" in the Templates dialog box OR you make sure that everyone in the authoring team has the same definition of "Normal" in their "Normal" template OR you attach the document to a template on a shared network folder that you know will always be available, and in which the "Normal" style matches that of the document. I don't see any problem with copy/pasting from other documents or emails that use Normal, particularly with the latest versions of Word where you get a dropdown menu that allows you to choose whether to retain source or target formatting when you paste. To me this is easier than reformatting imported Normal text as Body Text. Even if somebody accidentally chooses "retain source formatting" when pasting, as far as I can see you can easily tidy this up by selecting "Automatically update document styles", saving, and then clearing this setting (or by selecting the offending text and clicking ctrl + space). Does this make sense? IMO, the arguments against using Normal are pretty weak. That said, I don't think the arguments against Body Text are strong either; six of one and half a dozen of the other. In any case, is there any good reason to use "Body Text", but still base it on "Normal"? I have seen this in some templates, but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Thanks, Adrian |
#13
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Body Text vs Normal
The argument table styles is an especially strong one, but I
think the problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than paragraph formatting. [...] I think the issue is with both font and character formatting. Only users tend to run into issues with font formatting more often. And if you change the paragraph formatting of Normal, table styles will likely be only a small part of your troubles eg. I'd love to use Normal as the default, since most Word docs use it anyway, and you would have the least work to do reformatting. Unfortunately, that has become less of an option because of the issues with table styles. BTW, I've heard from Stuart Stuple that table styles ignore settings in the document default -- which I assume is "(no style)"? -- rather than those in "Normal". That contradicts my experience, but I haven't had time to investigate. Klaus "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: The argument table styles is an especially strong one, but I think the problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than paragraph formatting. I haven't really paid close attention because I don't use "table styles" but do use specific styles for Table Heading and Table Text. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. |
#14
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Body Text vs Normal
I forget exactly what Stuart said about this except that it was going
to be either changed or made a lot clearer in Word 2007. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. "Klaus Linke" wrote in message ... The argument table styles is an especially strong one, but I think the problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than paragraph formatting. [...] I think the issue is with both font and character formatting. Only users tend to run into issues with font formatting more often. And if you change the paragraph formatting of Normal, table styles will likely be only a small part of your troubles eg. I'd love to use Normal as the default, since most Word docs use it anyway, and you would have the least work to do reformatting. Unfortunately, that has become less of an option because of the issues with table styles. BTW, I've heard from Stuart Stuple that table styles ignore settings in the document default -- which I assume is "(no style)"? -- rather than those in "Normal". That contradicts my experience, but I haven't had time to investigate. Klaus "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: The argument table styles is an especially strong one, but I think the problem arises from changing the font or font size of Normal rather than paragraph formatting. I haven't really paid close attention because I don't use "table styles" but do use specific styles for Table Heading and Table Text. -- Suzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. |
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