Show Your Style in Word

If you use Styles in Word (and you should), did you know that there’s a Style Area at the left of the screen, where you can see the Style names?

This can give you a quick overview when you’re formatting a document, and will help you apply the Styles consistently.

If you don’t use Styles, you can skip to the Random Thoughts section of this article, for a bonus tip. I know, how exciting! 😉

View the Style Area

Word 2007

  1. Choose either Outline or Draft View
  2. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click the Word Options button
  3. Click the Advanced Category
  4. In the Display section, set the width for the Style Area Pane, and then click OK

Word 2003 or earlier

  1. Choose either Outline or Normal View
  2. Click the Tools menu, and then click Options
  3. Click the View tab
  4. In the Outline and Normal Options section, set the width for the Style Area, and then click OK.

Hide the Style area

  • Drag the vertical line, between the Style Area and the document, all the way to the left.
  • Or, go back to the Options, and set the width to zero

Random Thoughts

In Excel, you can use the RAND function to calculate random numbers. In Word, you can use RAND to create text.

  1. In the Word document, type: =RAND()
  2. Press the Enter key.
  • In Word 2003 and earlier, you’ll see paragraphs with “The quick brown fox…”
  • In Word 2007, the paragraphs describe Word features.

In either version, you can enter two numbers as arguments in the RAND function, e.g. =RAND(3,4) to control the number of paragraphs (3), and sentences per paragraph (4).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.