This behavior (of absorbing explicit formatting into the underlying style) really muddies the water for people just learning how Word handles formatting. When this occurs, any other document elements that used that style automatically change to reflect the newly applied format. This happens because Word can "absorb" explicit formatting changes into the underlying style. Word also makes it possible for explicit formatting to not just override the implicit formatting, but to become the implicit format. You can't remove it you can only override it. For instance, if you select a few words in a paragraph and then click the Bold tool (on the Home tab of the ribbon) the selected text is formatted as bold, but you haven't removed the style that controlled how the text was originally formatted. If you try to ignore styles, then most, if not all, of your paragraphs use the Normal style.Īny explicit formatting you do is always done as an overlay to the underlying style-based formatting. If you create new styles, you are creating new "default" formatting that can be applied to various elements of your document. If you change what is within the definition of a style, then you've changed the formatting applied across all paragraphs or characters that use that style. You can't get away from them they are always there, even if you try to ignore them. Explicit formatting is done through the use of formatting commands, such as those found on the ribbons and in various dialog boxes.Īll default formatting in Word begins with styles. Implicit formatting, which is formatting done by "default," is implemented through the use of styles. In general, there are two types of formatting in Word: implicit and explicit.
Every time she highlights a section of text and then changes the font or margin alignment, Word changes the whole document into that new font or margin.īefore explaining how to fix this, it is necessary to do a bit of a review about how formatting is handled in Word.
So, to unify text that should be listed under a single index entry, simply modify the XE elements and hit the update index button afterwards to apply the changes.Emily has a concern about how she keeps losing document formatting.
XE defines the entry, and it can be different from the selected text. This changes the marked entry.Īll that needs to be done then is to select the index, and hit the "update index" button to apply the changes. Jump to the location in the document that you want to modify, and simply modify it in text (the XE part). advertisement, Advertisement, and Ads.Ĭorrecting mistakes is easy. A basic example is multiple indexed entries that refer to the same type of information, e.g. I suggest you go through the index afterwards to correct any issues that you may notice. A preview is displayed in the window so that you know how it looks like in the document when you make changes. You can use it to change the number of columns for instance, or select a different format template for the index. Word loads a configuration window that you may use to customize the index. Select References > Insert Index to add it to the location. Go to the location in the document that you want the index to be displayed in. Once you are done marking text in the Word document, you can add the index to it. Step 4: Add the index to the Word document Yes, it will take longer to create the index but the result will be better. While you can automate that somewhat, I suggest you don't as you get more control over the indexing this way. Go through the document and mark text that you want included in the index. You may disable the paragraph marks and other hidden formatting information on Home > Show/Hide, or by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-( Word displays text that has been marked with XE "TEXT" so that you know that it has been marked already. You may change the page number format (bold or italic to highlight specific text), add a subentry, or use the mark all functionality to automate the process. If you just want the text indexed hit the mark button to be done with that.
Word opens the "mark index entry" window that you may use to configure the entry.