Delete Word Built-In Styles

May 19, 2010 7:11 AM

Deleting Word 2007's Built-In Styles

Word 2007 comes with a bunch of built-in styles -- Emphasis, Subtle Emphasis, Intense Emphasis, Reference, Subtle Reference, Intense Reference, Quote, Subtle Quote . . . and on and on. As a graphics designer, I find all of them fussy and useless, and they take up space in the styles list, pushing the ones I create out of immediate visibility.

I can delete them from the ribbon, but I want to get rid of them forever. Unfortunately, when I display the drop-down Styles list (by clicking on the little arrow at the right of the Styles label in the ribbon) and right-click on a built-in style, the Delete option is grayed out.

I'm willing to do a Registry edit, but draw the line at editing the Word .exe file.

Thanks.

posted by KRS to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Check out the Word 2007 MVP site. I'll be these guys have some ideas for you. This section looks particularly promising. Good luck!
posted by xiaolongbao at 7:20 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

You'll do better by creating your own template, with your own styles and naming them with something that starts with an underscore - so _aKRSemphasis would show up at the top of your list of styles. Then just use that template whenever you want to use those styles.
For extra robust-ness, do not base any of them on "Normal", which is the default setting. If Normal ever gets corrupted (and it will, eventually), then all your styles are as well.
The MVP site is a godsend.
posted by dbmcd at 10:00 AM on May 19, 2010