[comp.sys.mac.apps] Word Style Sheets

kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) (07/14/90)

>The bad news:  On the Mac, they aren't really style sheets, but become
>a part of each separate document.  This loses what I saw as one of the most
>powerful features of style sheets:  That you could have ONE style sheet for
>MANY documents, and therefore could make ONE change to a style (say, change
>the indenting from 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch) and it would instantly be reflected
>in ALL the documents.  To make that same ONE change in the Mac world, you have
>to individually open EACH of the documents and make the change in each...

You can though make changes to the default style sheet, and thus have what you
want. If you change the style and then select Change default it will act the
way you wish ...
		   Steven A. Schrader (SAS102 @ Psuvm.Bitnet)

[everything above here is quoted]

Unfortunately Steven's suggestion pertains only to new documents. What we
need is a way to bring all existing documents into line with one format.
There is no clean way to do it today. Even deleting styles is a major 
pain. Everytime you delete one the style list scrolls back to the top and
you have to scroll down to find the next one to delete. Not pleasant when
the document you get from someone else has 127 styles and Word is going
bananas trying to print such a document.

One style sheet that is separate from the Document would be a MAJOR 
improvement to Mac Word.

Shirley Kehr

carl@aoa.UUCP (Carl Witthoft) (07/18/90)

In article <147883@felix.UUCP> kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) writes:
[re an ongoing discussion about porting and updating Styles]

>>The bad news:  On the Mac, they aren't really style sheets, but become
>>a part of each separate document.  This loses what I saw as one of the most
>
>One style sheet that is separate from the Document would be a MAJOR 
>improvement to Mac Word.
x
Well, there's no easy solution. I agree that it's a pain in the rear to
update a whole bunch of documents just to change some default style.  
On the other hand, consider the kind of environment I have: my 
company has something like 25 independent Word users on 25 Macs.  Now,
when I want to collect documents from several separate people, I will
of course get a bunch of different Styles.  But if they all are "based
on Normal" (as most are), and all these documents automatically
switched to my personal "Normal", the formatting would go to pieces.  
In this scenario, at least, I'd rather fix the documents carefully and
one by one.


-- 
Alix' Dad ( Carl Witthoft @ Adaptive Optics Associates)
{harvard,ima}!bbn!aoa!carl
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