How to Modify a Style in Word 2013

Word 2010 For Dummies

Just as fashion styles change, you may need to change styles in your Word 2013 document. Nothing is wrong with that. In fact, by changing a style, you demonstrate the power of Word: Changing a style once causes all text formatted with that style to be updated. It beats the pants off making that change manually.

To modify a style, heed these steps:

Summon the Styles task pane.

Keyboard shortcut: Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S.

Point the mouse at the style you want to change.

A menu button appears on the right end of the style’s entry.

Click the menu button to display the style’s menu.

The style’s menu will appear.

Choose Modify.

The Modify Style dialog box appears, although it’s the same Create New Style from Formatting dialog box.

Change the formatting for your style.

Use the Format button to alter specific styles: font, paragraph, tabs, and so on. You can even add new formatting options or assign a shortcut key.

Click OK when you’re done.

Close the task pane if you’re done with it.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.