Trying To Impose Consistency In Word Documents (Part II)

…so how do you enforce consistency when users won’t cooperate? When they don’t read your cheat-sheet instructions? Retain anything from your training sessions?

You turn into Style Gallery Cop and put your documents into lockdown. “Lockdown” means blocking users from modifying styles and from applying direct formatting to the document.

To do this:

1. Open the Word document or template in question.

2. Make sure your Style Gallery contains all the defined styles your document’s users will need and doesn’t contain any “adhoc styles.”

3. Go to the Tools > Protect Document menu item. This will open the Protect Document sidebar on the right side of your document window.

4. Select the checkbox next to Limit formatting to a selection of styles. This will open a dialog box in which you can define the specific formatting restrictions.

5. Do one of the following:

• click on the checkboxes next to the styles that you want to allow folks to use in the document
• click All (which provides access to all defined styles while still preventing modifications and adhoc formatting)
• click Recommended Minimum (which works best if your document has simpler style needs)

6. Click OK to save your changes and return to the Protect Document sidebar.

7. Click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection. This opens a password dialog box.

8. Enter and confirm a password.

9. Click OK to start document protection.

Whenever your document is opened, the Protect Document sidebar will appear in the document window, notifying that the document is password-protected and that special restrictions are in effect. The user will be told that s/he can format text only with certain styles (an Available Styles hyperlink will help them see which ones). The formatting restrictions will remain in effect until the Stop Protection button is clicked in the Protect Document sidebar and the password is entered.

This tactic requires some time upfront to make sure all needed styles are defined, but it will save many hours of repetitive reformatting during the editing phase and production checks.