Create a title style in Word to save time and mouse clicks

Are you finding that after you type and format a title or heading and press Enter, you need to manually change the paragraph text back to the Normal style? You can save a lot of time by creating a custom heading or title style that does all the work for you. Follow these steps to create a custom Title style:

1. Open a blank document and type Title.
2. Select Title and click the Bold and Center buttons on the Formatting toolbar or Home tab.
3. Change the font to 22 points.
4. Click anywhere in your title text.
5. Go to View | Task Pane, click the arrow in the New Document box, and select Styles And Formatting. In Word 2007, click the Styles dialog launcher in the Styles group of the Home tab.
6. Click the New Style button in the Task Pane. Figure A shows the New Styles button in Word.)

Figure A

1. Click in the Name box and enter My Title.
2. Select Normal from the Style For Following Paragraph drop-down list.
3. If you want this style available to all documents you work with, select the Add To Template check box. In Word 2007, click the New Documents Based On This Template button (Figure B).

Figure B

1. Click OK.

The My Title style should appear in your Task Pane. Now when you type your title text, click My Title in the Styles Task pane. Word automatically formats the title text for you. When you press Enter to begin typing the next paragraph, Word will automatically switch back to the Normal style. You can use the same procedure for creating custom headings that save keystrokes.

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