Word – Customizing Styles

The great thing about working with styles is that if you make changes to one style, you have the option of affecting ALL the text that utilizes that specific style. For example, if you don’t like the size of your Heading 1 style, you don’t need to edit EACH Heading 1. Word allows you to make one change that affects them all.

Keep in mind that this applies to

fonts
font-size
color
leading (line-spacing)
tabs and indentations.
Paragraph alignment (left, center, right, justify)

The easiest thing to do is to make all the text changes you want to the original text that has a style applied.

Before: Text with Heading 1 had a Cambria font, 20 pt size, and black color.

After: Selected Text with Heading 1 has been manually changed Calibri font, 18 pt size, and a blue color.

So how do we do this?

With the text selected or with your cursor located in the line of text containing the style you want to change, click the HOME tab (if not already selected).
Click the STYLES expansion button in the styles group.
The style panel will show you the current style applied to the text you have selected or your cursor is located in.
Move your mouse over the currently selected style.
A pop-up will appear displaying information about the style.
Click the drop-down arrow and choose
Update Heading 1 to Match Selection.
All text that uses that style will automatically be updated.