Solved: Names of custom page styles are changed

[DraftWorks]

I set up about 25 custom page styles for a lengthy dissertation. The settings work very nicely to handle the document formatting needs (varying headers, pagination, etc).

But when I saved and closed the document for the night, I opened it the next day and all the custom style names were gone. Clicking in the document showed that there were now a number of styles (Convert 1, Convert 2…Convert 85) which were applied throughout the document.

All the styling was still correct, which is good, but I want to understand why the custom names (which were really helpful for me) have all changed. That will make it pretty hard to troubleshoot if I do need to change anything.

Is there something I should do differently with the original document itself? It’s saved as Word 97-2003 and isn’t a template (this is the only file for the project aside from a backup). It wouldn’t be reused for any other project. Thank you!

[mikekaganski]

Is there something I should do differently with the original document itself? It’s saved as Word 97-2003

You are using an unique ODF feature: page style. MS Word and all its formats simply have no notion of page styles at all … and so the formats simply incapable of storing such information!

Generally: always use native formats when working with any application; and only export to external formats when need to send someone using an application unable to use your native formats; even then, keep the original in native format.

[DraftWorks]

Thank you! I changed my working file to an ODF, created a few custom styles, closed, and they were still there on re-opening (not that I doubted you). Much appreciated.

[mariosv]

Please, if the answer solves the question click .