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How to change a style in Word Online?

Anonymous
2019-04-16T14:28:43+00:00

I'm using Word Online as a part of Office 365. I need to change the default Normal style -- specifically the paragraph formatting -- to my preferences for all the technical documentation that I do. But there seems to be no way to do that. How can I edit a style in Word Online so that I don't have to keep updating paragraph styles manually on each and every document I create?

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-04-16T18:11:55+00:00

    Hi Thom

    I am an independent advisor and believe I can help with regards to your question.

    Word Online does not come with all the features of the full version, but they are constantly improving the product, although it will take time.

    This is the way that I would do it, and I admit it is not perfect, but it works for me.

    If you can create a file in the full version of Word then save to OneDrive with your styles. You can then open that file up and do a save as with Word Online. This would take most of the Styles across into the Word Online Interface.

    Just for your information, there is a site https://word.uservoice.com/ where you can suggest improvements and/or enhancements to Word, Microsoft do keep this updated with items that will appear in the future.

    Please let me know if you have any queries or questions.

    Kind Regards

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2019-04-16T15:16:53+00:00

    Roberta, the content in the article you referenced https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/use-styles-in-word-online-ec9b0f9e-a4ae-43a1-b861-dd50747410bb says, "Note:  You can’t add new styles or edit the built-in styles in Word Online the way you can in the Word desktop application." And after trying the suggestion to "use the Open in Word command to open the document and use [the Word desktop application] to create and edit styles", it seems that process will only edit (or create) styles for that one particular document. What I need to be able to do is edit the default Normal style so that this style is in effect for every document I create. I guess that's not possible?

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  3. Stefan Blom 338.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-04-16T18:16:08+00:00

    As others have said, Word Online does not let you modify styles. What you can do is download your document to the local drive and edit it in some other word processor. For compatibility reasons, using the full version of Word would be the best choice, but you can of course use one of the third-party open source word processors, as long as the program you choose is capable of editing paragraph styles.

    8 people found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2019-04-16T17:23:41+00:00

    Your assistance was great! The answer you had to give ... not so much! :)

    6 people found this answer helpful.
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  5. Anonymous
    2019-04-16T14:40:33+00:00

    Hi, I'm Roberta, a Microsoft Advisor and I'm here to help and assist you!

    Did you try to follow the steps on the link below?:

    https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/use-st...

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/foru...

    Hope this helps!

    Thank you

    2 people found this answer helpful.
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