Word 2010 - Nested styles ?

Hello Charles,

Thanks for the reference but it deals with style inheritance, a concept I'm pretty much familiar with -- I use it for my headings and my bullet or numbered lists styles are based on my body text.

If I'm correct, using style inheritance would mean to create (according to my example) a new "Background" style and new "BG - Body Text" and "BG - Paragraph Lists" styles which would be distinct from my regular "Body Text" and "Paragraph List" styles.

Besides, in this case I'm not sure it would be possible to not have white blanks in the background color between paragraphs with different syles.

I want to keep my regular styles and apply a second style (my "Background" style) on top of them.

I know of no way to do what you want other than by cascading styles and changing the formatting of the underlying or base style. Of course, I do not know everything, as I discover each day. Someone else may have better ideas.

Themes come close to this but a document can have only one theme.

Hi Sclarkeone,

if you would like to load a sample document that would be more helpful.

But if you are as competent as you suggest then you should be able to use a character style which on top.

Kind regards

janinecrutch.com

Hi Janine,

Sorry if I sound arrogant, that was not my intention. Sure, I consider myself to be an "advanced user" of Word but I'm pretty sure I still have a lot of things to learn about it and that's actually why I came here. :-)

Word Styles is the feature I like the most in it and I'm using it a lot. This is why I suppose what I'm describing is not possible to achieve easily but I'd be glad someone proves it wrong.

If I got correctly, what you suggest wouldn't do the trick either since I want the background color to apply at a multi-parapgraph level, not at a character level -- which I previously called "inline", since I wasn't sure about the English Word term.

I've uploaded a sample file, that might help to clarify my idea.

Once again, thanks for your time !

Hi, your sample file is not accessible. Not taking you as arrogant just everyone's idea of styles is broad to say the least and if you have a relatively simple style list you can most probably do what you want. I am not saying you can just that it may be possible in your particular document to make it work for you. No harm in trying to find a solution for your particular document.

The highlight tool would be better and sits on top of your styles. I think using character style you will have problems which is what you have discovered. You cannot place one style on top of another.

You can email document to jecATjaninecrutchDOTcom

or upload to an accessible link.

Kind regards

janinecrutch.com

What you are describing sounds like you want to put your styled paragraphs into a Div tag where the CSS can apply the shading behind the content.

The equivalent in Word would be to place the content into either a table cell, frame or text box. My own preference would be to use the table cell option which you have already identified as a method. A simple way to make these easily identified is to apply a table style and then loop through the tables looking for instances of that table style.