Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Printing Style Sheets.

Printing Style Sheets

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 2, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365


5

In your permanent documentation for a file, you may wish to print a record of the style sheet you used. Word allows you to do this quite easily. Simply follow these steps:

  1. Press Ctrl+P to open the Print settings screen. (Ctrl+P in Word 2007 displays the Print dialog box.)
  2. Using the first drop-down control under the Settings heading, choose Styles. (This option is within the Document Properties group, visible after expanding the drop-down list.)
  3. Click on Print.

The resultant style sheet is not terribly pretty, but it provides the information you may need to understand (at a later date) the styles you used in developing your document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (4272) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Printing Style Sheets.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Pop-up Comments

Want to see what a comment says just by moving the mouse? Here's how.

Discover More

Determining the RGB Value of a Color

Excel allows you to fill a cell's background with just about any color you want. If you need to determine the RGB value ...

Discover More

Mail Merge and Data Source Documents become Unattached

When you create a mail merge document, you attach it to a data source that is the basis for the information to be merged ...

Discover More

Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 365 applications with VBA programming. Written in clear terms and understandable language, the book includes systematic tutorials and contains both intermediate and advanced content for experienced VB developers. Designed to be comprehensive, the book addresses not just one Office application, but the entire Office suite. Check out Mastering VBA for Microsoft Office 365 today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Turning Off a Dictionary for a Style

There may be some paragraphs in a document that you don't want Word to spell- or grammar-check. You can 'turn off' the ...

Discover More

Renaming a Style

Styles are invaluable when it comes to applying consistent formatting in and across documents. If you need to rename a ...

Discover More

Putting Style Names Next to Paragraphs on a Printout

If you use styles to format your document, you might want a way to print the document and show, to the left of each ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 9 + 8?

2024-03-19 04:35:26

Robert

@Andrew – thanks for your further suggestion. I'm unfortunately locked into Word 2010, which as far as I can see can't open a PDF, even with the Acrobat Pro add-ins installed. But there is a more general problem with a PDF-based approach, which is that a PDF cannot internally represent features of a Word document such as tables and styles, so that the result of a PDF-to-Word conversion can never be a coherent Word document such as a human with a good knowledge of Word features would create. I recently evaluated about six different PDF-to-Word converters. All of them failed to recreate tables coherently and created a wild ad-hoc litter of styles that made the document difficult to maintain and extend. I'm going to see if I can get access to a later version of Word to try out the built-in converter that you mentioned, but it's hard to see how it can escape these same problems. Thanks again for your comments.


2024-03-18 09:52:00

Andrew

Robert, Word can open and the PDF files directly, and can then save them in Word format if you like.


2024-03-16 08:35:52

Robert

@Andrew – Thanks for your suggestion. But I was actually looking for a solution that would more directly allow me to get the list of styles into a Word document, where I could then edit and format it any way I liked. I'd prefer to avoid the pain of converting a PDF, generated as you suggest, into a Word document.


2024-03-11 10:33:29

Andrew

You can print to a file, e.g., to a PDF using the "Microsoft print to PDF" printer.


2024-03-09 12:49:30

Robert Love

Thanks for this tip. I tried it out on a few of my documents. Styles "Balloon Text", "No List", and "Table Normal", were always listed, even though they're not used anywhere in the document. I know they're not used because (1) Find, when asked to find any text with a particular style, can't find them, and (2) The styles manager marks them as "Hide until used" and colours them grey, and they are also not shown in the styles pane. It would be nice if Word would refrain from printing styles that are not used.
Also, is there some way to get Word to put the list of styles in a file or document?


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.