Word: Styles - Changing Document Template

If you need to migrate a Microsoft Word document to a new template, you will find quickly that this is a difficult task because Word seems to remember previous formatting, and contaminate new styles.

The conventional advice is to copy and then paste without formatting. However I have discovered a method where you can preserve formatting and the new styles. It's a little strange but it is well worth the effort for larger documents.

Here are the steps:

1. Open the Styles pane:

2. Open the Style Organizer, and copy over all the styles from the target template (or Word document):

3. (Optional) Run the Styles Cleanup macro to remove unused styles.

4. Select all, and copy to clipboard all the contents of the original document.

5. Open up a new document based on the target template.

6. Paste from clipboard all the contents into this new document. 

NOTE: You will find that the styles are not modified or altered now, since the styles were already replaced in the original document. However any manual formatting that was performed on top the styles is also preserved.