Standardising your styles across documents

If you are working on a lengthy book, you will probably end up working with each chapter in a separate Word document. So how do you make sure that your styles and style names stay the same from chapter to chapter?

1. Simple, just use the Templates and Add-ins feature of Word to attach a master template to each of your chapters.
2. First, you need to create a master template which holds all the styles that you plan to use in the job. There are a couple of ways to do this.
   1. One is to create a blank document, go into Format > Styles... and simply create all the styles that you think you'll need. Save the document as a template (with the .dot extension) - you can save it to some useful place, such as the default Templates folder for Word.
   2. Alternatively, you can style up one chapter, delete all the text and then save this blank document (with styles) as a template, as for (a).
3. Once you have created a master template, you can then attach it to each chapter that you work on. Go to Tools > Templates and Add-Ins...
4. At the top of the dialogue box, you will see a section for the Document Template, which usually defaults to the Normal template.
5. Click on Attach... and find your previously saved master template and click on Open.
6. Your master template will now appear in place of the Normal template.
7. Make sure the option to Automatically update document styles is selected and then hit OK.

You should now find that all your carefully prepared styles are now available in your document.

So what happens when you want to add or change a style? Simple, just open the master template, add or change the style and save it again. Next time you open any chapter that has that master template attached, the new or changed style will automatically be updated.