How to modify styles in exported Word documents

[David Gleason]

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_]

@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. 

[Brant Schroeder]

@David Gleason You can customize PDF exports in Confluence cloud, here are the instructions on how to do so.  You need to be a Confluence or space admins can customize the PDF exports for individual spaces.  https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/customize-exports-to-pdf/ 

[Angela L_]

What about Word? 

[Margaret Hassall]

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_]

@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!