Protecting formatting within a Word document

Is it possible to protect only the formatting in a word document?

The idea being that when we create a document in a standard format that may
be later updated by a variety of people - some well skilled in word and
others novices - we want to maintain the formatting. Often when people work
on these documents, they don't understand the formatting rules and end up
messing things up.

Any thoughts or ideas?

There are (some) provisions for this in Word 2003. Other approaches a

1. User education/training.

2. John McGhie's draconian approach: Tell users they can do anything they
like with their docs, but when you get them back, you're going to Ctrl+A,
Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+Spacebar. Any formatting not applied using styles will thus be
a waste of time.

3. Accepting that those who know how to use Word will have to clean up the
mess that the others make.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"LWert" wrote in message
...
Is it possible to protect only the formatting in a word document?

The idea being that when we create a document in a standard format that
may
be later updated by a variety of people - some well skilled in word and
others novices - we want to maintain the formatting. Often when people
work
on these documents, they don't understand the formatting rules and end up
messing things up.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks for the ideas, but I already knew these were possibilities.

I should note that even those who have been trained seem to seldom use
styles and are not very aware of them. I guess they don't recognize this
power of this utility. Note that styles can be updated in some situations
without knowing that it happened.

I am actually referring to things that affect underlying styles. For
example, when someone copies in something from another document, the styles
from the item copied in often come along. At that point, the second item
doesn't do much good. I presently use Word 2000, so the utility of Word 2003
doesn't apply (but maybe I will consider an upgrade).

Any other ideas?

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

There are (some) provisions for this in Word 2003. Other approaches a

1. User education/training.

2. John McGhie's draconian approach: Tell users they can do anything they
like with their docs, but when you get them back, you're going to Ctrl+A,
Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+Spacebar. Any formatting not applied using styles will thus be
a waste of time.

3. Accepting that those who know how to use Word will have to clean up the
mess that the others make.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"LWert" wrote in message
...
Is it possible to protect only the formatting in a word document?

The idea being that when we create a document in a standard format that
may
be later updated by a variety of people - some well skilled in word and
others novices - we want to maintain the formatting. Often when people
work
on these documents, they don't understand the formatting rules and end up
messing things up.

Any thoughts or ideas?