Word Designer is a really fast way to reformat a document into something very interesting and professional. Here’s how to use it properly and add extra tweaks to make your Word doc look really great.
All these documents were transformed from a plain document with a few clicks. Word Designer does a lot more than the Office Themes and Styles available in Word for Windows/Mac.
Word Designer can change a Heading 1 style into a table (bottom right), add an image (top right) or change the page color (bottom left).
Word Designer is only available in Word online (the browser-based version of Word).
Those changes might not be exactly right but they can be a big leap forward, leaving only minor tweaks. For example, the image in the top-right doc isn’t appropriate but can be easily changed to something better (see below)
Word Designer is similar to PowerPoint Designer for ‘jazzing up’ a creation.
Starting with Designer
In Word online, open the document then, on the Home tab look on the far-right for the Designer button. That opens the Designer pane with ‘ideas’ for reformatting the document.
Click on any thumbnail to see it applied to the whole document.
Scroll down to see more options and there’s a ‘See More’ button at the bottom to load even more.
Remember that you’re looking for a suitable overall look that you like. The exact colors etc can be changed after the main Designer changes have been applied.
Check for non-standard styles
Word Designer works mostly by changing the document styles (Normal, Heading 1, Heading 2 etc). A clever addition to Designer is a ‘review … formatting fix’ which checks for non-standard styles or formatting that won’t be changed by Designer. That’s something which Word’s Themes feature doesn’t have.
If a Reviewing box appears, check the fixes to see if they are appropriate.
Choose from the list a style you want to apply to the paragraph or click the Accept (green tick) option to apply the selected style.
It’s OK to leave unfixed formatting in the document but remember to change those paragraphs later.
Improving on Word Designer
As we said, Word Designer isn’t the ‘be all and end all’ of formatting a document. It’s very helpful but usually needs one of us poor humans to add the finishing touches.
Here’s what we mean, starting with this wildly inappropriate look for the Gettysburg Address.
For starters, change that blobby image for something more fitting. The main heading (Heading 1) is changed to the same font and color as the sub-headings. The space before/after the headings is reduced so the whole speech fits on a single page.
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