Mediaboss Marketing

June 6, 2013, 8:51 AM PDT

Takeaway: Use Words STYLEREF field to create dynamic links that more efficiently reuse text.

Repeating content is common. For instance, you might want to repeat a name or refer to a documents title in the header. You could re-enter the text each time you want it to appear in the document. An AutoComplete item would reduce your input effort, but either way, youd still have to remember to update each instance if you change the original text. For example, lets suppose you want to display a documents title and major headings in the documents header. If you change the actual title or heading text later, youll have to remember to also update the headers. That type of task is hard to remember, especially months after the fact. Wouldnt it be great if you could link the header to the original title and headings? Thats exactly what Words StyleRef field does.

In a nutshell, the StyleRef field is a reference field that displays text automatically. When using the field, youll identify the style youve applied to the text you want to repeat in the form

You must delimit stylename as a string using the quotation marks and switches is optional. Word searches for the closest text formatted with stylename and then displays that text. This field supports the following switches:

There are two ways to insert fields. Ill show you both and you can choose the method you prefer. To use the interface, do the following:

You can bypass the interface and enter field codes directly as follows:

An example Word doc illustrating this technique is available for download.

See more here:
Use Word's StyleRef field to efficiently reuse text