I’ve just acquired a machine with Word 2010, and I’m struggling with the default styles. The useless Calibri, 11pt, bizarre-paragraph-spaced “Normal” is usually the first thing I change. So, I dutifully made it my usual–12 pt, Times New Roman, normal paragraph spacing. I selected “For All Documents Based on the Normal Template.”
When I open new documents from there, I get the nice, not-stupid default. But if I close Word entirely and re-open it, it’s back to the original settings. Arg.
The same thing happens when I set my other Quick Styles. I change them, save them, and Set As Default. “But no,” Word says, “that can’t possibly be what you want! Where’s the 11 point font? The gaps between paragraphs? THE 1.15 SPACING?” Now, if I dig, I can get to my original styles, but really, it’d be nice to have Word default (at very least) to my Times New Roman “Normal.”
Can anyone help make these settings stick as default?
Try opening the Normal template, making the changes you want and as you described, and then saving the template.
Once get get it working, incidentally, you may want to save a copy of your new Normal template in another directory or on a flash drive, [del]if[/del] when the old one gets corrupted.
What’s especially frustrating is that if I alter the “Default (Black and White)” one so it’s different, then when I re-load Word, it’s no longer the one selected as default. There’s actually none selected! That’s how desperate the program is not to let me have what I want.
Okay, do this. First, exit Word entirely. Second, open it again. Open the Normal template directly: that is, CTRL-O, then click on “Templates” in the upper left corner of the window, then select the “Normal” file. Make whatever formatting & style you wish, then save it. Exit Word, start it up again. Your changes should all be there.
Weird… I can change the style, check “New documents based on this template” and it’ll automatically stick even if I re-open Word. I never have to fiddle with the Normal template directly.