Mac OS10.5.8 TextEdit query

[peripathetic]

How do I get rid of settings that were created in my first, experimental, trial TextEdit document and now open in every new document?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Matheous-2]

TextEdit is one of the best little word processing programs there is. Not really sure what you mean by "and now open in every new document?" Do you mean that every new type of file you double click- TE tries to open it? Personally, I would right-click my mouse to check which Applications my Mac shows in a sub-menu when I want to open a file. TE can handle both text and photo files eg. from most web pages I often select (left click & drag the mouse) a piece of equipment advertised with photo & text right-click 'copy' open TE and from the menu select 'paste' then save as an .rtd file or .pdf.
Please let me know if this helps or requires further clarification....

[peripathetic]

Thanks for your response.
Because of a problem with Mellel 11 I tried using TE and
what I attempted to say is that I selected some type specifications and cell colours (Incidentally from a Pantone swatch) just as a trial. Now when I want to create a new TE document these selections appear (although not the Pantone swatch) and I would like to get rid of them and create specs etc exclusive to each new document .
I have tried everything I can think of without success (the documentation being virtually non-existent -even The Mac OS X Leopard Missing Manual is a dead loss in this area.
I have been working professionally with Macs as a graphic designer, using Photoshop - back when it didn't even have layers, Quark, Freehand etc, etc for approx 20 years
and I still cannot resolve this problem however I do agree that TE is a good basic programme.

[Milvus]

Try opening text edit, preferences, Restore All Defaults. Close and reopen textedit

[Matheous-2]

Forgive my limited knowledge -but I don't understand why you would involve TextEdit to deal with Pantone files/swatches when you have Quark & Photoshop at your disposal...

[Matheous-2]

Sorry, I meant to add- Presumably you have tried a rt. mouse-click -get info to observe options in that resulting dialogue?

[peripathetic]

Thanks to Matheous-2 (Love your icon/avatar?- very Schieleresque) and Milvus (For some reason I have a file titled 'Milvus' which I cannot read?) for your suggestions.
I've tried these to no avail and have now given up.
I fail to see Apple's reason for including programmes without sufficient support documentation. Nevertheless thank you for your efforts.