Forum Discussion
Heading 1 settings don't persist
I've googled the heck out of this and none of the answers work. Here's my situation:
I am writing a book. For convenience I'm breaking chapters down into individual Word documents for the time being. I'll assemble them later.
Every chapter beings with a Heading 1, which I understand will be needed later to effectively build a TOC. However, the styling Word applies to Heading 1 is not to my liking. I want Times New Roman 18 font black, centered on the page. Word insists on Calibri 16 in blue, left aligned.
The first suggested fix is to highlight the heading after I've given it the format I want, then right-click Heading 1 in the toolbar and apply this as the new style. Unfortunately, that only works for the current document. When I start a new document (chapter in my book), Word reverts right back to the same old unwanted heading style.
So I found in the Styles pane that I could actually edit the settings for Heading 1. Great! (no, not really). I edited what I thought would now be a global, forever-more setting for all future Heading 1s. I checked all of the boxes to apply this now, apply this... etc.
No joy. The moment I leave the document and start a new one, I'm back with the old unwanted blue Calibri heading.
What am I missing here? TIA for your answers.
3 Replies
Yes, it is great that you can modify the built-in styles.
When you do this, the default is for the changes to apply to the current document, only.
However, you can, in the modify style dialog, set the style to be for any new documents created from the template (in addition to the current document). It does not change the definition in already existing documents, though. What is the relationship between a Microsoft Word document and its template?
- You can copy style definitions using the Organizer.
- If you have a style in your template and you want it to apply to an existing document based on the template, you can tell Word to update the styles in the document from the template. Update Styles Options
- Best practice for your book is to create a template that has your styles, and perhaps AutoText/Building Blocks, Keyboard Shortcuts, and macros. Use that template as the basis for each of your chapters.
- To change the font for all headings, change your document defaults. Change Default Settings by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP This, again, would be something you do with the template for your chapters.
If you are writing a book with Word, you can't afford to be a beginner. Get to at least intermediate level with this short series of tutorials: Basic Concepts of Microsoft Word - from Shauna Kelly In a very short time, you will know enough to have Word help you with your writing rather than seeming to throw up road blocks every time you turn around. Reading those tutorials will save you both time and frustration.
Resources:
- The Importance of Styles in Microsoft Word
- Organizer
- Templates in Microsoft Word
- Basic Concepts of Microsoft Word - from Shauna Kelly
- Managing Word Styles by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP
- Numbering Front Matter by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP
- Change Default Settings by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP
- Avoid the Master Documents "Feature" in Microsoft Word
- Automated Boilerplate Using Microsoft Word
- Hi Charles,
Thank you for your reply. I should clarify I'm not exactly a beginner at Word, have been using it since it came out, but as I'm sure you know, I'm encountering situations now in writing a book that I never encountered before in my previous use cases, which usually involved writing technical documentation for computer science. Anything that was to be published, like user manuals, was then passed on to an editor who'd do necessary formatting.
Anyway, your advice well received, and I do find myself on the formatting end now and am reading all I can. Honestly, I'd been formatting each of my chapter headings myself by hand, which really only took a few steps. Then I read an article on KDP publishing that said to produce an effective table of contents, I needed to have these headings actually marked as "Heading 1". Not one to argue with what the documentation tells me, I started painstakingly going back and doing what I was told.
I HAVE found out, however, that after going to the styles pane of Word and editing the defaults for Heading 1 AND THEN EXITING WORD AND RESTARTING IT ON MY MAC, that Heading 1 is now working exactly like I want it to.I would still urge you to read the articles. After using Word for more than ten years, and frequenting newsgroups about Word, I still learned much from both Shauna Kelly's articles and Suzanne Barnhill's pages. I came to Word after having used a dedicated word processor and Word Perfect. Years after I started using Word, I finally learned the importance of styles. That is what I put in my article on that subject.
You do not need to use the built-in heading styles to generate a Table of Contents, but it makes it easier.
