Can't set default font and size globally

[steeley]

All going well with Neooffice so far, except one small thing:

I've been trying to set the default font to something other than Times New Roman 24, but it keeps going back to this. Been through all the font prefs I can find. I mostly use the drawing app. so I often double-click objects to put text inside them. I appear to be on the latest stable neoOffice.

TIA

[ovvldc]

[sardisson]

It's somewhat boneheaded that there are real preferences to set the default font for Writer but that *only* the Styles method is available for other modules.

Gotta love the refined German sense of logic

Smokey

[BillD]

I have a similar problem with the spreadsheet, but it won't be solved by using a template. In my spreadsheets I have set them all to a specific font (MinionCondensed 12pt) by formatting all the cells in the document. I couldn't find any way to set the default font in the spreadsheet preferences. My columns have also been formatted as to alignment by choosing the column headings, which should format all the cells in that column.

The problem is that the application seems to forget all of these formats on a regular basis. I will add a new row to the doc., either at the end or somewhere in the middle, or start writing in a blank row and as I fill in the cells they will be in some default font (Bitstream family, which I never use for anything) and the alignment in the colums will be other than the rest of the cells in that column.

This gets tiresome in a hurry and I must be missing something. I am setting these formats the same way one does them in Excel or AppleWorks, but its not sticking for some reason. The cells with data are not affected and keep their proper formatting, but the formatting seems to only reliably apply to cells with data in them.

G5, 1.8MHZ, 1.25GB, OS10.3.9 NeoOffice/J 1.1 patch 4

Thanks

[sardisson]

I'm not a heavy Calc user, but it sounds like you've missed setting these settings in your (default) template for Calc.

First of all, open your template and then open the Stylist (Format: Stylist...). Ctrl-Click on the Default style and select Modify. Make sure the font for your language is set to what you want it to be. You can also set global alignment options, etc. (if 75% of your rows/columns are aligned in X, then set them here).

Then right-click on Default again, select New, and set up a new style for a particular row/column type (it will be "linked" to the Default style, so it will always inherit changes in the default style that are not contrary/overriden by settings that are different in the new style itself). Repeat for the number of row/colum/individual cell styles you will need.

Then click on the row or column header (1 or A) to select any particular row/column or range, and double-click on the appropriate style in the Stylist (note that Writer has a menu on the left-hand side, before the font, for this; it can be added to the Calc toolbar--and probably should be by there by default to encourage proper use of styles, but that's another issue...--by right-clicking the grey part of the the middle toolbar, choosing "Visible Buttons...", and putting a check next to "Apply Style"), and assigning the proper styles to the appropriate column(s)/row(s) and cell(s).

Then save your template and set it as the default as instructed in the appropriate sections of "Editing Default Styles" in the wiki.

Hope this helps.

Smokey

[Piet Hein]

Man, this is not the easiest way to implement a default font in an application.