Stop Word from Creating Huge Number of Styles

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How to stop Word from tracking Styles?
How to stop Word from automatically creating enormous number of styles?
Thanks.
Armstrong

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How to stop Word from tracking Styles?
How to stop Word from automatically creating enormous number of styles?
Thanks.
Armstrong

Hi Armstrong,

Word comes with a large range of Styles built-in. You can’t delete any of those, but it doesn’t create new ones of its own accord, either.

What you’ll typically see is the list of Styles actually in use in the document concerned, though you can change that to show all available Styles. When configured to show the list of Styles actually in use in the document, you may see a sudden increase the the reported list if you copy & paste text from a web page or another document (especially if that document comes from an external source).

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Armstrong,

Word comes with a large range of Styles built-in. You can’t delete any of those, but it doesn’t create new ones of its own accord, either.

What you’ll typically see is the list of Styles actually in use in the document concerned, though you can change that to show all available Styles. When configured to show the list of Styles actually in use in the document, you may see a sudden increase the the reported list if you copy & paste text from a web page or another document (especially if that document comes from an external source).

Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply. By the Styles, I don’t mean for the Word default styles, which can always be automatically regenerated in case the normal template is deleted. Instead, I mean for those trivial styles Word madly creates as shown in the screenshot.

Armstrong

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Click the Office button.
Select Word Options.
Click Advanced.
Clear the check box “Keep track of formatting”.
Click OK.

Word will no longer display pseudo styles based on formatting.

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Hi Paul,
Thanks a lot. Your solution works like a charm. Now my Styles task pane is much cleaner.
Just out of curiosity, does Word still create the “tracking” styles internally? Why does Word create these tracking styles in the first place? It must be of some value.
Armstrong

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Hi Paul,
Thanks a lot. Your solution works like a charm. Now my Styles task pane is much cleaner.
Just out of curiosity, does Word still create the “tracking” styles internally? Why does Word create these tracking styles in the first place? It must be of some value.
Armstrong

We don’t know what Word monitors internally.

One of the uses of “Keep track of formatting” is the option to select all text with the selected style – the button “Select All” below the style dropdown in the Styles and Formatting task pane is only enabled if “Keep track of formatting” has been turned on. If that option is turned off, the “Select All” button is disabled.

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There’s also an option in the Style Pane – Options to not show Font formatting as Styles
This also applies to Word 2003

Click the Office button.
Select Word Options.
Click Advanced.
Clear the check box “Keep track of formatting”.
Click OK.

Word will no longer display pseudo styles based on formatting.

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Hi Timolot & HansV,
Thanks a lot.
Armstrong

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