How to see all Styles in Microsoft Word

When using Microsoft Word, you might notice that some of the Styles in the “Styles” section are missing. This is very likely to happen after you changed between designs. No need to worry, though. You can simply unlock the “missing” styles in three simple steps. We made a short but sweet video to explain how it’s done. In under three minutes, you’ll learn how to unlock those styles again.

Not into videos? We’ll give you a hint. Look at the bottom right of the “Styles” pane in your menu. When you find it and click it, a “Styles” pane will open somewhere on your screen.

On the bottom of that pane, you haven an “Options” button. Of course, the name might be different in your language, but the location stays the same: click that button on the bottom right.

A new window will open. If you open the first drop-down menu, you can choose which styles Word should display. The setting will usually be set to “Recommended” but you can select “All” to unlock the missing styles. Then click “Okay” a few times, and the missing styles should now be available.

Well, almost all of them

You will notice that you won’t be seeing all the styles that you saw in the “Style” pane. That’s expected behaviour. Word will only show you certain Styles if you are already using their parent styles in a document. For example, it won’t show you Heading 4, 5 or 6 if you haven’t used Heading 1, 2 or 3 at least once in a document. Can’t argue with their logic that there’s no need to apply a Heading 6 when there’s no other heading in your document!

So, in order to “unlock” these styles, you simply have to use their parent styles in the document as well. Easy peasy!

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