Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 4:27 pm Post subject: Trying to make Styles work the way I want
I have manually created a numbering format that I want to use for section headings in a document. I want to take an example of a formatted paragraph and give it a name in the style sheet under custom styles. In the short attachment below, I created a paragraph in the style I want (with numbering). I copied the paragraph and pasted it twice. I then have 3 paragraphs with consecutive numbering. I select the 3rd paragraph and right-click the style sheet to invoke 'Create new style from selection'. I give it a name in the dialog box, click OK, and get the result you see on the third line where the paragraph is reformatted. Why can't I give my style a name?
So in your sample document, you created the new "Trial" paragraph style. If I understand your question correctly, you are not seeing the new style name listed anywhere.
If that is the problem that you are seeing, then open the Styles and Formatting dialog using the Format :: Styles and Formatting menu. Then, change the list box at the bottom of the dialog to "Custom Styles". This should display any new styles that you have created in the current document.
Does that answer your question or did I misunderstand the problem?
You misunderstand. Let me try to be clearer. In the attachment, you should see 3 paragraphs, each consisting of the same single line. They were created by simply copying a pasting twice the original line after I manually formatted it. After I copy and paste, I have 3 paragraphs, numbered consecutively, with a 1.5" hanging indent. I want to take this simple format and create a new style with the name 'Trial'. I set the cursor in the 3rd paragraph and invoke the 'Create a new style from selection'. I create a style called 'Trial', but the format of the third paragraph changes! In other words, by naming the style, the formatting is altered and I cannot use that style name to create future paragraphs with the formatting I want. I believe my attachment shows the screwed up 3rd paragraph, which you can compare to the first two. The 3rd paragraph is the named style.
The indenting problem that you see is happening because your text contains custom indenting changes so selecting "New Style from Selection" causes NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code to copy the cumulative sum of the custom indenting plus the text's assigned style's indenting. from the selected text's assigned style.
The simplest way to avoid this behavior is to not set any custom indenting in text until after you select "New Style from Selection". If that is not practical, you can select "New Style from Selection" and then do the following steps to reset the indenting to match the custom indenting:
1. Right-click or Control-click in the text with the new style and in the popup menu that appears, select the "Edit Paragraph Style" option.
2. In the dialog that appears, click on the "Indents & Spacing" tab and set all 3 of the settings in the "Indent" section to zero (zero is the value used by the "Default" setting that your text originally had) and press the OK button.
3. Right-click or Control-click in the text with the new style but this time when the popup menu appears, select the "Paragraph" option.
4. In the dialog that appears, click on the "Indents & Spacing" tab and set all 3 of the settings in the "Indent" section to match the custom indents that you originally set. In your case, the 3 values are 1.50", 0", and -1.50". Then press the OK button.
After the above steps, your new style will have the same indenting as the original style and the text will have the same custom indenting.
I will try your advice. I experimented with a variety of different approaches & sequences of actions before I wrote you. I did not keep notes, but nothing gave me a style name that I could apply to do what I want in the document. My solution at present has been to use the format brush to set formats in about 15 different places. It was tedious, and I had mysterious problems with the window jumping many pages away as I tried to position the brush icon onto the target paragraph.
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