How to modify styles in exported Word documents

Question

We write technical documents in Confluence, but need to output to Word or .PDF for distribution (temporary situation). The output is OK but the styles are generic, typeface is Times New Roman; we'd like to improve the output. Can it be modified using .css? Or must we apply a template *after* the export?

Angela L_ · Answer

@Margaret Hassall Thanks for the tips. I'd done all that, but something was wrong with the normal template I used, so it still wasn't working. I had to start from scratch, and now it works!

Margaret Hassall_iqlpiv · Answer

Hi @Angela L_ I do this in 2 steps.

With the generated document I apply my normal template with the correct styles. I have to check "Automatically update styles ..." for this to work. This updates the styles, but the layout is usually not correct.

However, this generated file is a "DOC" and not a "docX".

So I create a new .docx document based on the template I want, then copy/paste the content from the generated file - which puts the correct styles into the correct layout.

Angela L_ · Answer

@David Gleason Did you ever find a solution for this? Even applying a template afterward somehow doesn't fix the style issues we're getting when exporting a page to Word.