Further, if you press the up-arrow key once (so that your insertion point is now in the paragraph just before where you pressed Enter), the style for that paragraph is selected in the Formatting task pane. The style applied to the current paragraph by Word is highlighted there this is your "offending style" and the one you need to change. Immediately upon noticing it, take a look at the Formatting task pane. Then, as you are typing, pay attention to when the "bold-after-Enter" problem occurs. The way to make absolutely sure of which styles are affecting your formatting is to display the Formatting task pane by following steps 1 and 2, above. This is the most likely scenario, but it is possible that the problem is a style different from Normal. I've assumed throughout this tip that the culprit is the Normal style or is at least related to the Normal style. (Just make sure you use that style in steps 3 and 4.) Once displayed, turn off the Bold indicator, click OK, and the problem should not crop up again. The solution is to note what style is specified in the Style for Following Paragraph drop-down list and use the above steps to display the Modify Style dialog box for that style. If that specified style is set to use bold text, then you get Martha's situation-the new paragraph seems to have "bold turned on." As soon as you do, whatever style is specified in the Style for Following Paragraph drop-down is applied to the new paragraph. When you come to the end of a paragraph, you instinctively press Enter to start a new paragraph. So, you are typing along, and whatever formatting is defined for the Normal style is applied, automatically, to your text. Here's how this setting translates into actual use: This drop-down list specifies what style should be applied to a new paragraph whenever you press Enter. This is a very powerful setting for a style. Notice in the Modify Style dialog box that there is a drop-down list entitled Style for Following Paragraph. This brings us to the second-and more likely-possibility for Martha's situation. If this is the case, then you can click the Bold indicator (to turn it off) and then click OK. If the Bold indicator is "turned on" in your dialog box, then your text is going to appear as bold because that's the way that the style is defined. Pay particular attention to the settings in the Formatting area, about midway through the dialog box. Look at the way the dialog box appears in your version of Word it will more than likely be different from the dialog box shown above. Even if you don't pay attention to styles, the Normal style is used for all your text. Why is this important? Because the Normal style is used, by default, for all text in Word. This Modify Style dialog box is used to define the formatting characteristics associated with the Normal style.
Or, a style may define that same text as 14-point Tahoma, italic and underlined. For instance, a style may define that text is 12-point Arial, bold and blue. In Word, a style is a defined set of properties applied to text. Even if you don't know what they are or what they do, they still come into play in how your text works.
#How do i turn off automatic formatting in word 2016 how to#
So, before explaining how to fix it, a short discussion of styles is in order.Įverything related to formatting in Word is based on styles. There are two possible reasons why this is happening, and both have to do with styles. No matter what she does, she cannot get bold to stop turning on by itself, so she is wondering why this is happening. Whenever Martha hits Enter to begin a new paragraph, she notices that bold is turned on.