Setting sort order and styles to show

A nice feature included in Word 2007 is the Styles Option component. Once you begin using styles to their full capacity, your style list may become rather large. The Styles Options feature makes it easier to use your styles when they're sorted the way you work best, and you can select which styles you want to view, along with several other added bonuses, which we'll explore. We're going to begin by opening up the Styles pane. In the Styles pane, you'll see an Options button on the very far right.

Click on it, and it says, Select styles to show, styles In use and As Recommended, at least that's what mine say at this time. Yours might be a little bit different. Let's change those around. Right now, we could see the ones that are In use. Let's change this to All styles, and let's change this bottom option here from Recommended to Alphabetical, and then click on OK. Now, here are all the styles that you have available for you. These are built-in styles, and these are the Index styles.

You've got List styles, Bullet styles all kinds of styles and styles that you've added to the Normal template. There's even TOC styles down here at the bottom. Now go back to Options and change this Select how the list is sorted to By type and then click on OK. I like this view because it has all of your styles in order by the type of style they are. So up here at the top where the little a is, that's all the Character styles, then you have your Link styles next, with the paragraph mark and the little a.

And if you keep going down, you'll see the paragraph mark. That means those are Paragraph styles. You may notice that there's a few things missing, such as Table styles. Press Ctrl+Shift+S on your keyboard, and you'll see the Apply Styles box pop up. In this list, it's also being sorted by what you're choosing, but there's a few differences. Now, this is by type. You've got all there your little as and then your Link styles and then your Paragraph styles, but you might notice these are your Table styles.

So the Table styles are in your Apply Styles list, whereas they're not in the Styles pane. When you go all the way down to the end, you'll see four, or maybe more if someone's added them, List styles at the very bottom, too. So, all your styles are in the Apply Styles box. There's another one that I wanted to show you guys. Underneath the Options here, you've got Select how list is sorted here, and you might have noticed As Recommended, and you also have Recommended up here underneath this Select styles to show.

So, I can say Recommended and As Recommended. Who recommended them? Well, it might have been recommended by Microsoft and come prepackaged as recommended, or it may have been someone else that worked on your document prior to you, or perhaps you're the one that did the recommending. Now, Recommend is based on a numbering system. For example, number one would hold higher priority over number two. The Recommend option is located under the Manage Styles option, and we'll be going into more detail about the Recommend feature in an upcoming movie.

Another helpful feature in the Style Option box is the Show next heading style when previous style is used. Go ahead and do a cancel here, and we're going to open up a new document by pressing Ctrl+N on your keyboard. Open up the Styles pane, and we're going to go to the Options button, down here at the bottom, and we're going to select styles here to show. This is going to be set to In current document and then Select how list is sorted, we're going to choose Alpha.

Check this box, or make sure it's checked, that says Show next heading level when previous level is used, and then click on OK. Type in =rand() and then press Enter. You might notice right now that Heading 1 and Heading 2 are showing right now in our Styles pane. If we click on this very first paragraph and we apply Heading 1 and then we click on the second paragraph and apply Heading 2, now Heading 3 is showing.

If we go to the third paragraph and select Heading 3, Heading 4 shows up. So that's what this option here for Show next heading when previous level is used option will do for you. If I had that turned off, they wouldn't be showing up like that. It helps your Styles pane from being too cluttered up. Now, go ahead and cancel here. We're going to close this document and go back to our exercise file. Now, go to the Options, and we're going to choose at the top, In use, and then we're going to take the Select how list is sorted, and we're going to change that to Alphabetical and then, where it says Hide built-in name when alternate name exists, click on that and then click on OK.

These are going to be your aliases. If you hold your mouse over this top one that says AT, you could see the name of the style is actually Agree Title, and the alias is AT. BT is Body Text. So it'll only show the aliases in your list. These changes also apply to your Apply Styles list over here, as well. So you could see AT and BT, and here's one down here in alias of R. Now, one more important thing: If you go to Options and you look down here at the bottom, notice that you do have the option to say, New documents based on this template.

If you only select in this document, you'll make these changes to the current document and only for this document, and it will be saved with this document, or if you choose this other option here for New documents based on this template, all of your new documents going forward will have these options available, and you don't have to make these changes every time you open a new document. Sorting styles the way you want to see them makes working with styles faster and easier. There's no right or wrong way, although on second thought, actually there is; the right way is to set these options how you work best.