Applying, Modifying, and Creating Styles in Writer

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.
Note: Reader Michael gives this excellent tip: "To apply the Heading1 style, you can use the "Control+1" combination. Heading2 and 3 work the same way."

Note: See also a blog on a related topic, templates.

How do you create styles? Or edit them, or apply them?

Basically, you create styles by choosing Format > Styles and Formatting. Then right-click in the empty part of that Styles and Formatting window and choose New. (Or select an existing style, right-click on it, and choose Edit.) Then make your formatting choices and click OK.

To apply a style, just select the character (or word), the paragraph (just click in it), the list, or the page, and double-click the style.

But you probably wanted a little more detail. I'm going to show how to modify a paragraph style, and create a page style. The principles are the same for all types of styles, however,

 

Applying a Style

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. The Styles and Formatting window will appear.

Click the icon for Paragraph, Character, Page, or List styles, depending on what kind of style you want to apply.

Select the text or page in your document you want to apply the style to.

Double-click the style in the Styles and Formatting window.

Tip: The Styles dropdown list shows all the applied paragraph styles in your document. You can apply a paragraph style by selecting text, then selecting the style you want from that list.

Note: To switch from one page style to another, see this post.

 

You basically just click at the bottom of one page, choose Insert > Manual Break, in the list in the window that appears select the page style you want for the next page, and click OK.

 

Modifying a Page Style

Let's say you use the Heading1 style a lot but it's not what you want. Here's the Heading 1 style in the Styles and Formatting window, and what it looks like by default before you modify it.

It's nice but you want to punch it up.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.

In the Styles and Formatting window, right-click on the Heading 1  and choose Modify.

Click the Font tab and choose another font.

Click the other tabs and make changes that you want.

Click OK.

All the text where Heading 1 style is applied will be updated with the changes you made.

Creating a Page Style

You need to create a new page style for the document you're writing.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.

Click the Page Styles icon at the top.

Right-click in an empty part and choose New.

In the Organizer tab, name the style.

In the Page tab, specify margins and any other important information.

In the Footer tab, if you want a footer, mark the checkbox.

Make any other selections in other tabs.

Click OK.

Click in the page where you want the page style and double-click the page style in the Styles and Formatting window.

If you need to add footer or header content, do it now. Scroll to the header or footer and type or insert the content. To add a page number to a footer, for instance, click in the footer and choose Insert > Fields > Page Number. (Be sure text  boundaries are showing; choose View > Text Boundaries.)

Getting Styles From One Document to Another

Let's say that you've got styles in one document, document A. You love your styles, they're working' for you. That's great. Now you've got document B that needs to have those styles too. What do you do?

One option is to paste the contents of document B into document A. You can just paste, or Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text to make things unstyled. Then apply styles to the text you just pasted in.

A variation on that is to create a template from the document where you have your styles, then paste document B into that new template. Take document A, choose File > Templates > Save, put it in My Templates, call it My Styles Template, and click OK.
Then choose File > New > Templates and Documents, select the Templates icon on the left, open your My Templates category, and open My Styles Template. Then repeat the steps from the previous option to paste the contents of document B into that new empty template based on document A.

You can also load the styles from document A into document B.  To load styles in 2.x into a specific document, go to document B, where you need to bring your styles. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. Find the far-right top icon with the black downward-pointing triangle, click on it, and choose Load Styles.

In the styles window that appears, mark all the types of styles you want to bring in from your template, and select Overwrite. Then click From File, select your document A file, and click Open.

Those document A styles are now in document B. Just apply the newly loaded styles as necessary. If there are different style names in B than you want used, you need to apply your A styles. If the names are the same and you just want the A definitions used, then you're done.

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Comments

[Paulo Eduardo Neves]

One of my favorite styles features is the "linked with" (in the modify style -> organizer tab). With it you can define a base "Heading" style, and have all the other headings (header1, header2 etc.) derived from it. All the attributes from the base style are inherited. So if you want to change the font from all heading, you just need the change the defined in the base style.

[Michaël]

To apply the Heading1 style, you can use the "Control+1" combination. Heading2 and 3 work the same way. I use this all the time!

[Solveig]

Michael,

Excellent tip! Thank you. And that's another reason to use styles with those names. Another is those are the style names that are used by default in outline numbering, which many features are based on. Your TOC will also come out well with little tweaking if you use those heading styles.

Thanks,
Solveig

[Solveig]

Hi Paulo,

>> "One of my favorite styles features is the "linked with" (in the modify style -> organizer tab). With it you can define a base "Heading" style, and have all the other headings (header1, header2 etc.) derived from it. All the attributes from the base style are inherited. So if you want to change the font from all heading, you just need the change the defined in the base style."

That is definitely a powerful feature. I tend to do a little more freeform styles sometimes, though that's not *great* style all the time. Good point--if you just want Helvetica for your headings, then use the Linked With feature.

Another nice feature is the Next Style feature, so you don't have to manually switch from Heading1 to Text Body every time.

Thanks for the tip,

Solveig

[Marcel Kopmels]

Solveig,

using styles is quite powerful as you say but at the same time they do not seem to be completely functional in Calc and Impress. In Calc once you attribute a page style of one sheet to another sheet this works. But after saving and re-opening the file the page style attributed is replaced by the original sheet page style.
Difficult to understand also is why sheet styles are not hierarchical.
In impress one can modify an object style so that the object re-sizes with the text. When pasting (through organizer) this object style to an existing object it does not re-size. However, when one drags the objet and copies it at the same time (ctrl left-mouse)the object does re-size to fit the text. Bizarre isn't it ?
Another thing that I thought strange, but nothing to do with styles, is that distribution of objects is well hidden in impress. There does exist a button to align object on the standard toolbar. However, evenly distributing (so easy in ppt) is only accessible when selecting multiple objects, right-clicking them and then select distribute. This brings up a meny with much more sophisticated distribution than ppt. It beats me why this option is not even selectable as a button when customizing the drawing toolbar.

regards

[Kim Francis]

I have a custom style with Comic Sans 12 point applied, and 2mm following para, keep with next. However when I apply it, the text flow instructions are observed, but not the font. Is there something which can override font in a style when it is applied?

[Container]

Great overview! But, is it possible to delete the predefined styles?

[eldabbas]

Hello dear
Can i ask one question?
Pleas, how can i make some pages (first three page) without header,
sometimes when i apply the first page styles makes all document to be
without header, pleas it is very important for me

[eldabbas]

Hello dear
Can i ask one question?
Pleas, how can i make some pages (first three page) without header,
sometimes when i apply the first page styles makes all document to be
without header, pleas it is very important for me

[Solveig]

To read more about supressing the page number on the first page, check out this post.

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/04/openoffice_temp.html

There are templates you can download.

Solveig

[Kirill]

Solveig,

used your tutorial on arrowhead shaping: saved me a lot of effort. Thanks a lot!

Do you happen to know whether it is possible to create a kind of a master style storage with a set of linked documents? That is, I'd like to keep all my styles in one place with all my documents pointing to that place. I imagine changing a style in that master storage, and have the change propagated to all documents pointing to that storage. Is this possible? I will be grateful for any hint.

Thank you!

Kirill