Invisible wrote:
> Isn't the answer obvious? "I don't".

Why would you think you can pick up a program as big as Word and intuit 
how it works?  Buy a book, dude. :-)

> Ah-hah. So there *is* a secret hidden tool for altering them! (At least, 
> there is in Word 2003.)

Yeah, the secret hidden tool for modifying styles is under the Styles 
menu, called Modify. ;-)

> Still puzzled as to why you have to open up a special window to do this. 
> (I.e., why you can't just click on the style you want to change.)

Go to Format->Styles, and right-click on one of the styles. Notice how 
you have "Modify this style" as well as "Modify this style to match the 
formatting of what's selected". What would you expect?

> then, this is from the program where you can't change any program 
> settings unless you have a document open. (WTF?)

Um, in mine I can, certainly. Just not stuff that's stored with a 
document, like, say, styles.

> (Ooo, that's nice... If I change a style to match an existing one, the 
> existing one gets deleted. And if I change the justification for the 
> Normal style, the other styles update. Pitty you can't explicitly say 
> which settings are applied in THIS style and which ones should just be 
> inherited...)

You can. That's why the modify-style dialog has things like "based on 
Normal" in the configuration.

> OK, no go. Word *refuses* to overwrite NORMAL.DOT because it's already 
> open. (Duh!) God I hate Word! >_<

Really. It's complicated enough you need to buy a book if you want to do 
more than the most trivial stuff. Or at least wander around in the help 
files, which are actually quite good.

For example, search the help for "Modify normal.dot". It gives you 
step-by-step instructions for editing it. They work.

> [Ironic, given that one of the things I was just talking about is that there *isn't*
a book...]

http://www.amazon.com/Word-2003-Dummies-Dan-Gookin/dp/0764539825

*That* wasn't hard.

> ....it's removable?? 

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/783.html

> The main problem with M$ Word is that it tries to "guess" what you want to do so it
can automatically do it for you. 

At least in 2003, it makes it really easy to say "Don't do that here" 
and "Don't do that any more."  I notice in OO it brings up its own 
Clippy to tell you it did something, but not really offer to undo it for 
you. :-)



-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

Post a reply to this message