Applying a Style to text in a table doesn't use Style font.

[oiverson]

EDIT:

I've reposted this in a simpler post. This thread was getting a little confusing and the problem is very simple.

I'm trying to apply a Style that uses Times New Roman as the font to text in a table but the table text remains using Arial. (it seems all the other formatting from the style is kept true to teh style)

In the attached document, try applying any of the "Instructional Italics" styles to any text in the table and you'll see that the font remains as Arial rather than adopting the Style Font of Times New Roman.

SELECT TEXT:

APPLY STYLE:

TEXT LOOKS LIKE THIS (FONT STAYS ARIAL, NOT TIMES):

Why? I feel like there's a "Table Style" that's overriding the font (but not the point size, highlighting etc).

I do have a "Table Characters" Style, but I'm not sure if that's it.

[#2]

@oiverson Add the Style to the Styles Gallery and then, after applying the desired font to the text, select the text and right click on the Style in the Styles Gallery and then on Update [Style Name] to Match Selection.

[#3]

@oiverson 

Is this Word for Windows? In that case, use the Font dialog box to Modify the document default font. Press Ctrl+Shift+F to display the Font dialog box, choose the desired font and click Set as Default. Choose the "This document only" option and click OK.

Once you have done that, you can modify the font of the paragraph style (if necessary) and it should display properly in the table.

[#4]

Doug - When you do this, and you then set the "OR" row in the table to be that "Instructional Italics..." style, the "OR" font DOES change for you?

It does not on my document (the one I uploaded). Again, the Style looks like it has all the correct settings, and selecting text that I pasted in from a different (but working) document and then using that to right-click and "Update" as you say doesn't change anything.

[#5]

@Stefan_Blom 

It seems that is the case already...

[#6]

I wonder if it's that Word is seeing "Times New Roman" as an OpenType font rather than a TrueType.

Even as Windows says that all 4 of my Times New Roman typefaces are TTF files:

[#7]

@oiverson 

You have to compare the style definition with the document default settings: In the Styles pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S), click the Manage Styles icon and go to the Set Defaults tab. 

[#8]

@Stefan_Blom 

Ah, I see.

That also looks fine - are you getting my example doc in the OP to work?

My select Style: ...

And that Styles' Defaults:

[#9]

Even more curious...
The Style type for SOME Styles was "Paragraph" so I changed them to "Linked (paragraph and character)" and now I can't change them back to "Paragraph". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But the curious part is that I tried modifying the base Style font to a different (but OpenType) font (ALGERIAN) and that propagates normally as I would expect:

If I modify the base Style to Times New Roman, the top highlighted text updates, but text in the table goes to Arial:

So being in a table doesn't seem to matter, and the text in the table DOES follow font changes, just not for Times New Roman...

[#10 · Accepted solution]

Ah HA!

I think the part that was left out, was that to have Styles work in tables, you need to make sure that both your "Normal" Style font and your document "Default" font match.

So whatever your "Normal" style is using, you need to go into your Default style and make sure that font is the same font.

In my case, our office Normal style has been switched to Arial. But when I looked at my Defaults, it was set to Times New Roman (I thought I was supposed to match the Default to the Style I wanted to use which was Times New Roman).

I found this solution here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/ms-word-normal-body-style-reverts-to-times-ne...

[#11]

@oiverson 

Thanks for the follow-up. Maybe my previous responses could have been clearer. As you have found, the document defaults must match the settings of a specific style: the Normal style. Once you have done that, you can modify other styles and apply them to text inside table cells, and Word will honor the format settings of these styles.

When you select Set as Default in the Font dialog box, Word modifies both the Normal style and the document defaults in one go.