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Did you change a paragraph style but the formatting of some of the paragraphs to which this style had been applied didn't change accordingly? This is because these paragraphs were subsequently reformatted manually.

An example:

Let's assume that you define a style specifying the paragraph alignment to be centered. If you subsequently change the style's alignment to right-aligned, all paragraphs formatted in that style will change accordingly.

However: If you subsequently selected a different paragraph alignment for one of these paragraphs via the command group Home | Paragraph, the change to the style no longer affects this paragraph. Manually applied paragraph formats thus take precedence over styles.

If you want such a paragraph to be "exempt" from manual formatting, simply select it and reapply the original paragraph style (using the steps described in Applying paragraph styles). The format of the paragraph will revert to that specified in the style, and subsequent changes to the style will affect the paragraph.