Renaming styles

You may decide that you want to rename your styles to something different, change an alias name, or even give your own alias names to built-in styles. Let's see each of these in action. We are going to begin by opening up the Styles pane, and notice the style named Ca Fact File Bodyr. Oops! It looks like I made a typo, but that's no problem. It's easy to correct. We are going to click on the down arrow and then choose Modify.

And let's correct the name. So just take that little r off there, and then click on OK. It's just as simple to rename an alias. Let's say you named your alias something you just can't remember, or you decide it just doesn't make sense. No matter your reason, Word makes it easy to rename your aliases. We are going to modify Ca Graphic,Graphic. There is a few things wrong with this guy. He is just too long, it won't save time, and the naming convention doesn't even match.

So let's select the down arrow. We are going to go to Modify, and we are going to change this Graphic alias, go ahead and delete it, and let's just call it CG for short. Click on OK and another really, really helpful thing: You can give alias names to Word's pre-built styles, for example, Heading 1. Let's click on Heading 1 from the Styles pane and click on the down arrow and go to Modify, and then put a comma here, and type in h1 and then click on OK.

We'll also give an alias to Heading number 2. Click on the down arrow, click on Modify, and from here, we'll put in a comma and H2. Make sure you don't put any spaces in there, as well. Down here it says, Only in this document and New documents based on this template. If you want the pre-built heading styles 1 and 2 to be available with an alias and all new documents based on this template, you would check this.

So most of the time, if you are giving an alias name to a pre-built style, you probably want to check New documents based on this template. So go ahead and click on New documents based on this template and click on OK. You can also use the Organizer to rename styles. From the Styles pane, go to Manage styles, and we are going to go to Import/Export and click on it to open up the Organizer. I still think that's just a little bit hidden. Anyway, with the Import/Export, it will open up the Organizer, and what we are going to do here is we can select any of these and click on Rename.

Keep in mind that naming conventions for styles in your document are very important. They can make you work, and those working on your documents, even faster by using identifiable style names. So, you can quickly know which style to apply in your documents. Renaming styles is as easy as modifying a style. You can also use the Organizer to rename styles. Adding your own aliases towards pre- built styles can be yet another time-saver that using styles affords.