Using Custom Styles for Levels in Outline View

Question

How do you associate different levels in the Outline View with custom styles? By default they are associated with Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.
Thanks!
Bobby

Answer 1

Styles apparently have a hidden "my associated outline level is #" property. However you have to start with a style that has this hidden property set as there seems to be +no way+ to access or change this property yourself (This is unusually poor interface design from Apple - they've traditionally been better than that.)
You essentially need to use only the names "Heading 1", "Heading 2", etc, for styles associated with outline levels, and you can't create these styles yourself. You can change the formating of these styles in the normal way: Start with a paragraph formatted using "Heading #", changing the outline level to the appropriate one, manually change the text to look the way you want, select the new formatted outline level paragraph, and do "redefine style with selection". You can't just apply another style, it over-writes the hidden outline level # property with its own, usually "body", making it really difficult to add an outline to an existing document - you have to re-create all the styles.
You can have mutliple styles that apply at the same level by doing the same as above, but instead of redefining the appropriate "level #" heading do "Create new paragraph style from selection". (You have to name it something other than "Heading #").
Applying this style gives a paragraph the associated outline level as well. Unfortunately, if you promote or demote an "outline level #" tagged paragraph, its hidden "outline level #" property is changed and the new style will always become the "Heading #" style associated with the hidden "outline level #" property. There is no memory of where it came from, of course, so if returned to its original outline level, it looses the "custom named style". There is no way to tell Pages that it should choose your custom named style by default instead of the "Header #" style for a given outline level. I can see no reason Pages couldn't do this too.
I have a complicated document that was written with consistent styles for headers, and now want to use the outline feature. I have to literally recreate all the heading styles from scratch. I can then do "select all instances" for my former styles and then click on the "Heading #" style reformatted as a copy, changing them to exactly what they were before, except with the new mandated name and the one magic hidden property changed.
There is also some weird behavior used to hide unused "Heading #" styles: You can see evidence of this if you repeatedly demote an outline paragraph; the extra heading styles automatically appear in the style draw. Then if you then repeatedly promote the same outline paragraph, these intermediate styles go away. How that works without loosing user-defined styles with the same name I have no idea.
Message was edited by: Stuart R. Jefferys
Message was edited by: Stuart R. Jefferys