Finding Direct Formated Styles

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I’m trying to get a list of a all styles in a document. However, some styles are not named other than by their direct formatting notation (such as “16 pt. Italic, Shadow”). These styles do not show up in Find or through (the following) code. Other variations include direct modification of an existing style (“List2 + Bold”), or part of a Normal style. They do appear in the Styles Pane but not the Import/Export Organizer.

How can I find these programmatically?

Code:

Public Sub MyFindStyles()
    On Error GoTo MyErrorHandler
   
    Dim currentDocument As Document
    Set currentDocument = ActiveDocument
   
    Dim myStyle As Style
    For Each myStyle In currentDocument.Styles
        Debug.Print myStyle.NameLocal
 
        DoEvents
    Next
   
    Exit Sub
 
MyErrorHandler:
    MsgBox “MyFindStyles” & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & “Err = ” & Err.Number & vbCrLf & “Description: ” & Err.Description
End Sub

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I don’t know how to find them programmatically, but they are not styles. Instead they are styles with direct formatting. The ones you see like “16 pt. Italic, Shadow” are formatting on Normal. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the others always show the style name first, then +, then the formatting description. If the style + formatting is used many times, you may want to make a style. In many cases they would have to be converted to character styles, though.

HTH,
Pam

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….turn off Keep Track of Formatting in the options. Then you will see only actual styles in the list.

– Jessica

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….turn off Keep Track of Formatting in the options. Then you will see only actual styles in the list.

I’ve recently discovered that in Word 2010 that even with Keep Track of Formatting turned off, you’ll still see styles like “Heading 1 + Bold” in the styles pane. To really turn this off, open the Styles Pane and click Options… at the bottom of the pane. Then uncheck any checked boxes in the “Select formatting to show as styles:” section. (Thanks to Hans V!) Make sure you click the radio button to turn it off for all documents using the template.

Manual formatting is sometimes mandatory — you can’t eliminate its use. Occasionally, you just have to adjust a single heading’s space above in order to look right… Unfortunately, without turning off the above, this will show up as a “style” even if it only appears once. I think of it as an extension of the format painter and just one more tool that MSFT provided to undermine their very powerful styles feature — and all the more reason to turn this off.

Best, Kim

P.S. Just checked — this is true for Word 2007, too.

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Thanks! That is good to know. But that’s the very reason I want to find them programmatically: We shouldn’t be having direct-formatted modified named styles. It sounds like there is no way to programmatically find these deviations?

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You would have to go through each paragraph and compare the actual formatting of the paragraph to the base format. Here is something that sort of does it. I can’t remember where I got, and I may even have either written or tweaked it myself, though I doubt it. It compares specific aspects of the paragraph’s actual format to the formatting in the basic paragraph style. It adds comments on the non-conforming paragraphs. You could do something else to them, of course.

Sub DetectDirectFormatting()
Dim p As Paragraph
Dim sCommentText As String
Dim sStyle As String

With ActiveDocument
For Each p In .Paragraphs
‘ line below ignores those end of table row things that are strange

If Not IsParaEndOfRow(p) Then
sCommentText = “”
sStyle = p.Style
If p.Range.ParagraphFormat.Alignment .Styles(sStyle).ParagraphFormat.Alignment Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “Alignment. ”
End If
If p.Range.Bold .Styles(sStyle).Font.Bold Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “Bold. ”
End If
If p.Range.Italic .Styles(sStyle).Font.Italic Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “italic. ”
End If
If p.Range.Font.Name .Styles(sStyle).Font.Name Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “Font. ”
End If
If p.Range.ParagraphFormat.LineSpacing .Styles(sStyle).ParagraphFormat.LineSpacing Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “Line Spacing. ”
End If
If p.Range.ParagraphFormat.SpaceAfter .Styles(sStyle).ParagraphFormat.SpaceAfter Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “Space After. ”
End If

If p.Range.ParagraphFormat.LeftIndent .Styles(sStyle).ParagraphFormat.LeftIndent Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “Left Indent. ”
End If
If p.Range.ParagraphFormat.OutlineLevel .Styles(sStyle).ParagraphFormat.OutlineLevel Then
sCommentText = sCommentText & “outline level. ”
End If
‘ Additional items here
‘If p.Range.ListFormat.ListTemplate .Styles(sStyle).ListTemplate Then
‘sCommentText = sCommentText & ” listTemplate ”
‘End If

If sCommentText “” Then
.Comments.Add p.Range, sCommentText
End If

End If
Next p
End With
End Sub

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Thanks for the code! Perhaps not the ideal solution but it addresses it.

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Sure. You could replace the line that creates the comment with lines that reset the paragraph and character formatting, if you’re feeling brave and don’t want to approve each change.

Replace this:

If sCommentText “” Then
.Comments.Add p.Range, sCommentText
End If

with something like this:

If sCommentText “” Then
.Comments.Add p.Range, sCommentText
else

p.Range.ParagraphFormat.Reset
p.Range.Font.Reset

End If

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