Char Char Char Styles in Word 2002

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Roxanne Ruiz - 26 Oct 2004 21:11 GMT

I read Susan Barnhill's response to a user (Dan ODell) with the "char char
char" style problem in Word. I understand this char style problem is
actually a result of Microsoft Word's "link style" feature which started in
Word 2002. Ms. Barnhill's reply to the user to treat the document as
"corrupt" in order to get rid of the styles is totally unacceptable. We
don't always have the time to clean up 150 (or more) page prospectuses. This
is a feature Microsoft has put into their program, they need to come up with
a solution. This "link style" feature is not helpful and is currently
causing problems in my firm. There needs to be an option to turn this off.
Please advise if you have any other workaround other than treating the
documents as corrupt. Thank you.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill - 26 Oct 2004 22:51 GMT

I don't know what you mean by "Link style," but AFAIK, this problem was
corrected by SP1. I never experienced it in a single Word 2002 document
(even without any of the SPs) except a single corrupt one that I inherited
from someone else.

Signature

Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

> I read Susan Barnhill's response to a user (Dan ODell) with the "char char
> char" style problem in Word. I understand this char style problem is
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> Please advise if you have any other workaround other than treating the
> documents as corrupt. Thank you.

Reply to this Message

Klaus Linke - 27 Oct 2004 01:23 GMT

> I don't know what you mean by "Link style," but AFAIK, this
> problem was corrected by SP1. I never experienced it in a single
> Word 2002 document (even without any of the SPs) except a single
> corrupt one that I inherited from someone else.

Hi Suzanne,

You must be charmed ;-)

I run into the problem quite often (Word2002, SP3).

And I often run into documents that not only have Char styles, but if you
look closely, the existing styles are linked in mysterious ways (say, the
character style "Bold" to the paragraph style "Header" and so on).
It's a form of corruption that I haven't yet found a fix for. Cindy Meister
has posted a macro to remove Char styles, but it hasn't worked for my
"corrupted" docs:
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MyFavTip.htm#CharStyl

The affected docs may not show any problematic behaviour for a while, but
at some time the whole formatting may get out of whack say by deleting some
style that doesn't even appear in the document.

The macro below removes the strange links between character styles and
paragraph styles.
Not sure if it helps or if it may even hurt to run it...
I just feel better if my documents don't have strange Link Styles in them.

' Based on Cindy Meister's macro:
' (any bugs are mine)
Dim myStyle As style
' On Error Resume Next
For Each myStyle In ActiveDocument.Styles
If myStyle.Type = wdStyleTypeParagraph _
Or myStyle.Type = wdStyleTypeCharacter Then
' MsgBox myStyle.LinkStyle, , myStyle.NameLocal
myStyle.LinkStyle = ActiveDocument.Styles("Standard")
End If
Next myStyle

You can then delete the Char styles... You will probably mess up the
formatting quite a bit by doing so, but not as much as if you hadn't
removed the Link styles before.

Dim myStyle As style
For Each myStyle In ActiveDocument.Styles
If myStyle.Type = wdStyleTypeCharacter And Right(myStyle.NameLocal, 5) =
" Char" Then
myStyle.Delete
End If
Next myStyle

Regards,
Klaus

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Klaus Linke - 27 Oct 2004 01:30 GMT

Another macro by Gary Frieder to remove Char styles can be found on Woody's
Lounge...
You might check it out -- It may well work better than mine:
http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/showthreaded.pl?Number=362594

Regards,
Klaus

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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 28 Oct 2004 18:09 GMT

Hi Suzanne,

> I don't know what you mean by "Link style," but AFAIK, this problem was
> corrected by SP1.

No, the only thing that happened with SP1 was that
- the Task Pane no longer displays "char char".
- having "track formatting" and "prompt to update styles" options on
together no longer generate linked styles

But the "select some text and apply a paragraph style" still causes the
problem. If you look in the Organizer, they show up (if present in the
document).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

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Klaus Linke - 28 Oct 2004 22:50 GMT

Cindy Meister wrote:

> But the "select some text and apply a paragraph style" still
> causes the problem. If you look in the Organizer, they show
> up (if present in the document).

There may well be other causes, too. In a document that contained char
styles, many of the built-in and user-defined character and paragraph
styles had links between them.
I'm pretty sure I didn't create them since I never once used most of those
styles.
In the macro I posted, you can discover such links if you un-comment the
line with MsgBox.

BTW, both Gary Frieder's and my macro create lots of corrupted tables in
documents that used table styles. Maybe they can also cause other forms of
corruption -- or maybe the documents I tried them on were already
corrupted.
Anyway: If you try them out, make sure you keep backups of your files.

Regards,
Klaus

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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 28 Oct 2004 18:09 GMT

Hi =?Utf-8?B?Um94YW5uZSBSdWl6?=,

> We
> don't always have the time to clean up 150 (or more) page prospectuses. This
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> Please advise if you have any other workaround other than treating the
> documents as corrupt.

I completely agree with you that it's poor design. Unfortunately, there is no
way to turn it off. Although with Word 2003's new formatting protection features
you might be able to reduce the occurrence.

The best way to deal with it is to train users to NEVER select text and apply a
paragraph style to it. Either no selection, or make sure the paragraph marks are
selected so that the style is correctly applied to the paragraph, and not to
characters.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

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Roxanne Ruiz - 28 Oct 2004 18:33 GMT

Hi Cindy M,
I am so glad to know that we are not alone in experiencing this problem.
Microsoft needs to look for a way to turn this off. Upgrading isn't the
answer. You are right, it is a training issue. Just when I had users
getting use to using styles, I have this to deal with this now. I did get
some help from Microsystems. I don't know if you've heard of this company
based in Illinois, but they make their living finding and correcting
Microsoft's "little" glitches!

> Hi =?Utf-8?B?Um94YW5uZSBSdWl6?=,
>
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
> This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
> in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

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Ronni Backer - 28 Mar 2005 19:55 GMT

Hi, Cindy -- I was able to use your code to de-link (and therefore delete -
yeay!) some styles but we get new ones all the time. I'm not proficient in
Visual Basic -- is there a way to specify the style name as any name with
"char" in it? I tried an asterisk but it didn't work.

thanks, Ronni Backer

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