I just wrapped up another book, and took some time to answer pending email. Here are two reader questions dealing with Microsoft Word:

In my version of Word 2003, I have a HUGE proliferation of Styles – character, paragraph and table. I have no idea where most of them came from, but I guess they are being added to a template, every time I do a bit of ad hoc formatting. (Am I close?) How do I get rid of them? What are the implications for any text which is in that style? What will it default back to? And (more importantly) how do I stop this proliferation from continuing?

All the styles you create in Word are saved in the NORMAL template. They do accumulate there, along with the several dozen styles that Microsoft creates and stuffs into Word. I don’t believe there is any limit on the number of styles you can create, nor is there any detriment to creating and saving them. (Well, I assume there is a huge number where the styles slow down the program, but I’ve no idea what it could be.)

To rid yourself of a style, right-click on its name in the list and choose Delete. I’m only guessing here; I no longer have a copy of Word 2003 online to confirm that.

When you get rid of a style, the text should retain the formatting from the style. If not, then it would revert back to the Normal style, though I don’t believe that’s the case.

The best way to stop stuffing styles into the NORMAL template is to create your own set of templates that you use for the common document types you create. Even so, there is no problem with continually creating new styles and saving them in the NORMAL template. It’s just messy, that’s all.

I purchased your Word 2007 for Dummies book which is quite helpful. The one item I can’t locate is how do you remove a page. I have a document with two pages and I only need one.

There are several ways to remove a page, but it depends on where the extra page is located. In my Word For Dummies books, I do discuss how to remove an extra blank page at the end of a document:

1. Press Ctrl+End to move to the end of a document.
2. Keep pressing the Backspace key until the extra page is gone.

Use the Status bar to confirm that you’ve deleted Page 2 and that the document only has Page 1 (for example).

Deleting a page in the middle of a document is more difficult. Those pages appear mostly because of ill-placed page breaks (new pages), so deleting the page break solves the problem.