[Originally appeared 1999.]
Word of Law No. 14 touched on use of the Style Gallery. It deserves deeper exploration. We explored how a document acquires styles and their settings from the template which gave birth to it. On creation of a document, that template becomes the document’s “attached template.”
The Style Gallery permits the settings of the styles in a document to be changed by copying the styles from another template. In a default installation, the Style Gallery can be accessed from the Format menu. The Style Gallery itself is a fancy display tool that has a simple result. When a template is picked, the resulting command, as described last time, is “ActiveDocument.CopyStylesFromTemplate (Template Name as String).” This can only copy those styles that are in the indicated template. That step automatically overwrites the settings for any of those styles that are in the current document and adds the styles in the copied template that are not in the current document. It will not change any styles in the current document that are not in the copied document.
The Style Gallery displays all of the templates that are located in the file locations for User Templates and Workgroup Templates in a single alphabetical list. If an organization has taken pains to organize its templates in a set of practice area related folders (such as Corporate or Litigation in a law practice), the list in the Style Gallery will not display that organization, since all of the templates in the subfolders join the single alphabetical list.
Effective use of the Style Gallery and template development generally can be helped by the creation and maintenance of a set of templates whose only purpose is to serve as a container for the styles for a class of documents. For example, there could be “Blank Correspondence,” “Blank Agreement”, “Blank Policy Manual” and “Blank Report.” These should contain the full set of styles that should be applied to those documents, obedient to the naming conventions in the Laws of Styles (Issue 4.20). To make these most easily visible in the Style Gallery list, their name can be preceded by a non alphabetic character such as an underscore ( _ ) to force them to the top of the list.
The Style Gallery dialog contains a preview window, controlled by the option buttons in the lower left corner of the dialog. The first Preview option, “Document,” displays the text of the active document, as it would appear if the styles from the selected template were copied to it. When working with fairly complete documents, this option works fine. When working with blank documents, such as in template development, the second and third Preview options, “Example” and “Style Samples” can be helpful. It takes some work in template development, however, for anything to be visible when these options are selected. Without that preparation, the preview will read “There is no example for this template” or “There is no sample for this template.”
The trick is to create AutoText entries in the template titled (precisely) “Gallery Example” and “Gallery Style Samples,” respectively. Any text containing whatever selection of styles can be used in these two AutoText entries. Thus, it would be helpful to include the name of the styles used in the sample text.
The details on the use of styles just in these last two columns, as with nearly all of the issues that have been explored in this column, emphasize the critical importance for an organization to separate the regular use from development and maintenance of Microsoft Word’s tools. Users should have the tools they need to create, edit and complete their work without having to deal with the underlying complexity we have explored. If the central development staff has prepared templates properly, including tools such as the Blank templates described above, users can easily produce or modify their Word documents in accordance with organization standards. The general user can limit the time spent on tweaking their documents, often damaging consistency with standards in the process.
The central development staff should master the complexities, such as construction of templates with Style examples described above. Please do not understand this suggestion to mean that all Word development should be limited to a group closeted away from regular users. The development staff should incorporate lead users who have the skill and interest to master the features. Such users may start as testers or pilot users for the work of the developers, then perhaps even move into a development group over time.
In a future column, we will compare the use of the Style Gallery to changing the Attached Template. Understanding that fully requires the context of the other characteristics of a template.
This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.