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Microsoft Word

Replace Styles in Attached Template

Document text must be formatted with styles that have the same style names as those included in the newly attached template. If the style names are the same, Word will update the text formatting to match the newly attached template’s style formats. Learn how to replace styles that have different names.

For example, you have a standard template for your manuals that has a style for every occasion and a few dozen styles for the stockpot. So far, so good. But now you’ve acquired one of your competitors and need to “translate” all their documents from their three templates to your template. You can make the changes easily enough by using Find and Replace to replace each style from their templates with the corresponding style from your template.

To replace one style with another style, make a two-column list of the styles you want to change and what you want to change them to. And:

  1. Open a document based on attached template.
  2. Choose File > Options > Add-Ins, choose Templates from Manage drop down menu, click the Attach button, select your company’s standard manual template, and click the Open button. Check the “Automatically update document styles” box, and then click the OK button. (See how to attach a template.)
  3. Choose Home > Replace (or press Ctrl+H) to display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
  4. If the “Find what” box contains text, press Delete to delete it.
  5. Click the More>> button if the dialog box doesn’t include the Search Options section.
  6. If there are any formatting details under the “Find what” box, click the No Formatting button to remove them.
  7. Click the Format button and choose Style from the shortcut menu to display the Find Style dialog box. Click the first of the styles you want to replace, and then click the OK button.
  8. Click the “Replace with” box. If the box contains text, press Delete. If there are formatting details under it, click the No Formatting button to remove them.
  9. Click the Format button and choose Style from the shortcut menu to display the Replace Style dialog box. Choose the corresponding replacement style, and then click the OK button.
  10. Click the Replace All button to replace all instances of the style under the “Find what” box with the style under the “Replace with” box.
  11. Select the next search style and the next replacement style, and repeat the replacement. Do this for all the remaining styles you wish to replace.

For more information, see how to attach or unattach a template and how to replace all occurrences of a style.

More Tutorials on “Using Word Templates”:

  1. Create a Template for a Document You Use Frequentl
  2. How to Use a Template Outside From the Default Templates Folder
  3. Attach Templates
  4. Replace Styles in Attached Template
  5. Transfer AutoText (AutoComplete) Entries Between Templates