About styles and inheritance

Two factors determine the appearance of a layout, the data design of the form and the styles that are defined on the study, form, or controls. Styles are inherited in the following way:

Study styles apply to all forms and items in the study. For studies created in release 1.3 or later, study styles are created when the study is created. For studies created in release 1.2 or earlier, study styles are created with default values the first time that you create or convert a layout. A change to the study styles is immediately reflected in all forms that inherit the study styles.
Form styles override study styles and apply to all layouts for a form.
Control styles override form and study styles for one control only. Keep in mind that some items, such as compound items, contain multiple controls. If you modify a control style, only the selected control is changed.

You set study styles in the Study Styles dialog box, and you set form styles in the Form Styles dialog box. The options in both dialog boxes are identical, except the Form Styles dialog box contains Inherit checkboxes for all options. If you select Inherit for an option, the value that is set in the study styles is automatically applied in the form styles. This option simplifies the process of overriding study styles because you can leave Inherit selected for all options except those that you want to override.

Styles can significantly reduce the time that you spend customizing a layout because you can set a style, such as caption alignment, in the study styles once, and all captions use the alignment. For example:

To align all captions on a form in the same way, you can provide a value in the form styles.
To align all captions on a form differently, you can provide a different value for each control in the control styles.

You can set most settings in the study, form, and control styles only, with the following exceptions:

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