Turn Off Automatic Style Updating
The Problem:
I applied bullets to two paragraphs I selectedbut Word applied the bullets to every paragraph in the document.
The Solution:
First, click the Undo button or press Ctrl+Z to remove the bullets. Then check out these two possibilities:
-
Your paragraphs aren't really paragraphs, but rather continued paragraphs with "soft returns" (Shift+Enter) between them. To check, click the Show/Hide ¶ button on the Standard toolbar to show formatting marks, and see if the paragraphs end with a
mark rather than a ¶ mark. If so, choose Edit 
Replace, enter ^l in the "Find what" box and ^p in the "Replace with" box, and then click the Replace All button. -
Word has decided automatically to update the styleand either it's the style that you've applied to all the paragraphs in the document, or it's the style on which all the styles you've used are based (in a default document, heading styles and some other styles are based on the Normal style). If the paragraphs aren't soft returns, this is probably what's wrong. In Word 2003 or Word XP, choose Format
Style, click the paragraph's style in the Styles and Formatting task pane, click the drop-down arrow, and choose Modify to display the Modify Style dialog box. Uncheck the "Automatically update" box and click the OK button. In Word 2000, choose Format Style to display the Style dialog box, click the style name in the Styles list, and click the Modify button. In the Modify Style dialog box, uncheck the "Automatically update" box, click the OK button, and then click the Apply button in the Style dialog box.