Displaying the Styles You Want Displayed

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 13, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365

Dave is frustrated by having to scroll through long drop-down lists of styles to find the one he is looking for. He wonders if there is a way to reorder the styles so that the ones that appear are those that are actually being used.

Using styles within a document or template is a great way to make sure you have a uniform look across multiple pages and documents. Sometimes, however, the list of styles can become long and not every style is needed for every project. Fortunately, Word allows you display only the styles you are using.

Make sure the Home tab of the ribbon is displayed.
Click on the small icon at the lower-right corner of the Style group. Word displays the Styles dialog box.
Click Options. Word displays the Style Pane Options dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Style Pane Options dialog box.

Using the Select Styles to Show drop-down list choose In Current Document.
Click OK.

The styles that appear in the Styles pane are now only the styles that are being used in the current 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 (8095) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.

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. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Positive and Negative Colors in a Chart

When creating a line cart, the line can show values both positive and negative values. This tip explains how you can use ...

Discover More

Replacing Text with a Graphic

The Find and Replace feature in Word provides you with some powerful tools you can use to process a document. One such ...

Discover More

Mixing Note Numbering

When inserting footnotes and endnotes in a document, most of us don't give much thought to the format used in the ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! Are you ready to harness the full power of Word 2013 to create professional documents? In this comprehensive guide you'll learn the skills and techniques for efficiently building the documents you need for your professional and your personal life. Check out Word 2013 In Depth today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Changing Styles

Styles are a great boon to making your documents look better and making them easier to update. You can change the ...

Discover More

Quickly Copying Styles

You can easily use regular editing techniques to copy styles from one document to another. Here's how to make quick work ...

Discover More

Moving All Headings Down One Level

Do you want to demote all the headings in your document by one level? There are some great tools built into the program ...

Discover More

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.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is two more than 0?

2022-10-13 08:34:05

Jennifer Thomas

Unfortunately, 'In current document' means 'ever existed in this document'. - if you paste test containing a style, then remove that style from all paragraphs, it will still show in the Style pane even if you have 'In Current Document' enabled. Same with 'In Use' -- the name implies that you would only see styles applied to text NOW, but that is not what happens (it's actually 'styles that were ever used in this document'.

The good news is that Allen has a macro to remove unused styles - that is really what most people want (just make sure you've applied all the styles you need first!) http://word.tips.net/T001337_Removing_Unused_Styles.html

2021-04-21 11:15:09

Scott Knitter

Great tip! Next I'd like to know how to get rid of the annoying tool tips that pop up from each style as I hover over styles in the Styles panel. These make it almost unusable sometimes! I don't need the tool tips at all. It's really a mess when these decide to pop up. But perhaps displaying only the styles used in my document will reduce the need to hover and get tool tip buildup.

2021-04-20 14:10:11

cherie

Where is the Style box? I can't find it. It doesn't appear when the Home ribbon is showing. These instructions are therefore uselesss.

2020-09-29 16:40:45

Scott Knitter

I wonder if defaults can be set for those first two settings? I never want anything but All Styles and Alphabetical.

2020-04-20 09:39:34

Richard Warner

It would be nice if Word actually worked as advertised, but unfortunately this function is buggy as Wuhan right now. Do you know any work-arounds? When I select "In Use" it gives me a blank pane. When I select "Current Doc" it gives all the styles known to Man.

2019-09-19 08:21:47

Rob

This was very helpful. Thanks so much for this great site.

2019-06-19 09:31:44

My coworker is using Microsoft 2016 and when she selects a style in her document the Style Pane Gallery on the right side of her screen does not automatically scroll/select the type of style she has selected in the document. I can open the same document on my computer and all works fine. Any assistance you can provide would be GREATLY appreciated.

2019-06-13 20:51:42

uri

Thanks for the info.

I can see all the styles in the style dialog box.

However, a few styles are missing from the Ribbon's style listing when it is set to the Home tab.

Can you help solving this problem?

Many thanks,

Uri

2019-06-06 11:32:49

Thank you kindly, this was exceptionally helpful in ridding me of some frustration.

2019-03-23 14:20:13

Bill Messick

Thanks, Allen. This will be a real time-saver!

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.