Karen, Rick makes a good point that a complete template should include more than just paragraph tags and mentioned Character and Table formats. I went thru this about 1.5 years ago and found inconsistencies in the following areas: - Conditional Text tags - Variable and Running Header/Footer definitions - Master Page layouts - Reference page contents - Color definitions - Cross Ref formats - Text Options - Footnotes - HTML setup (only if saving as HTML)
As a rough rule of thumb, your template should include everything that is selectable from the Import Formats pop-up menu. ------------------------------------------ Jeff Schweiner Hardware Engineering Writer Cray Inc. (715) 726-4801 Hi Karen, Here is how I would approach the problem. Find the component the book that is the most solid as far as styles. Make a copy of this and call it your "template." Delete all of the paragraph format formats in this document that still need work, leaving only the solid formats. For each of your other components, identify a one or more styles that you know that are in good shape. Think in terms of categories; for example, maybe you spent a lot of time getting your list styles in place in a particular document. Make a temporary copy of this document and delete all paragraph formats except the list styles. Now import these paragraph formats into your template and discard the temporary document. You do not necessarily have to do this in one sitting; you can do it over time as you work on your book. What you are doing is building up your template by adding solid formats to it. Since the paragraph catalog only contains your good formats, you can at any time import the paragraph formats from this document into all of the other components in the book. Once your template's paragraph catalog has the same number of formats as the book's components, then it should be pretty complete. You can do this process with your template's other categories of styles, like character and table formats. To round out the template, you could make this into a style guide for your book. When you want to modify or add formats in your book, do it in the style guide (template) first, and then import the formats into your book's components. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Thank you very much. Rick Quatro Carmen Publishing Inc. rick at frameexpert.com 585-659-8267 Hello Frame Gurus, I'm rather new to the list so please bear with me. I have a book containing 12 files. Over time (starting before I ever worked with these files), each file's paragraph style sheet has been modified so that now the book's styles are a sea of inconsistency. Using Paragraph Tools I can reduce the mess to what's actually in use and eliminate what I don't need. I still need to re-name/spec what remains more consistently. To get one file's formats into another, I know I could import paragraph formats to individual files. But I would have to re-create all the formats in one document first (even though they already exist, spread throughout several documents). Will this give the same result as if a single merged style sheet had been applied to all files in the book? Is there another (more effective/efficient/reliable) way? Anticipating your wisdom.... Karen
