Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. 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: Quickly Copying Styles.

Quickly Copying Styles

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 3, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

You can quickly copy styles from one document to another by the following technique:

Open both documents and make them visible on the screen at the same time.
Select a paragraph containing the style you want to copy. (Make sure you select the entire paragraph, including the carriage return at the end of it.)
Copy the paragraph to the Clipboard. (The easiest way to do this is to just press Ctrl+C.)
Move the insertion point to the other document.
Paste the paragraph from the Clipboard into the document. (A quick way is to just press Ctrl+V.) The style is automatically copied to the style list.

You should note that this technique assumes the style is not already defined in both documents. If it is, the style will not be copied into the second document, but the paragraph, when pasted, assumes the attributes of the style already defined in the second 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 (13215) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Quickly Copying Styles.

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...

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What is four less than 4?

2021-04-05 10:46:55

Andrew

"You should note that this technique assumes the style is not already defined in both documents. If it is, the style will not be copied into the second document, but the paragraph, when pasted, assumes the attributes of the style already defined in the second document."

It should be noted that there are options for how styles are handled when pasting text between documents where the style name is the same (i.e., it "conflicts"). These settings are in the "Cut, copy, and paste" section of Word Options->Advanced. You can keep the source's or target's formatting, merge the formatting (whatever that means), or keep only the text.

Andy.

2021-04-03 11:39:43

Philip Reinemann

On my Mac, I made a 'Normal' style paragraph and then changed the font to something else, making it ab'Normal'.

In a second document I made a couple of 'Normal' paragraphs.

Back in the first document I selected the ab'Normal' paragraph and used the format painting brush and clicked on the 'Normal' paragraph in the second document, and the format copied.

Granted, I didn't confirm that with a new style, just a modified style, but it' something to consider using.

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