Change all instances of a style at once with Word’s Formatting And Styles pane

You’ve just been handed a draft of a report for review. You decide that you want to change the style applied to the report’s section headings. You could use Find And Replace, but you are not quite sure what style was applied. Fortunately, you don’t need to know. Follow these steps:

1. Select the first section heading.
2. Go to View | Task Pane; click the drop-down arrow at the top of the pane, and select Styles And Formatting. (In Word 2007, click the dialog launcher box in the Styles group of the Home tab.)
3. Right-click the highlighted style for the selection (in this example, Heading 1 is highlighted.)
4. Click Select All xx Instance(s). In this example, there are three instances of this style (Figure A).

Figure A

Word selects all instances of the Heading 1 style throughout the document. You see that all three instances are applied to your section headings, and you would like to change the style to Heading 2. To change all three instances, click Heading 2 in the Task Pane, as shown in Figure B.
Figure B

Miss a Word tip?

Check out the Microsoft Word archive and catch up on other Word tips.

Help users increase productivity by automatically signing up for TechRepublic’s free Microsoft Office Suite newsletter, featuring Word, Excel, and Access tips, delivered each Wednesday.