OpenOffice Writer Styles Article on TechTarget.com

I've written a big ol' "what, why, and how" article on styles for TechTarget.com.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1230137,00.html

It starts with just how useful styles are in daily life and why they make life great, then goes into just how to apply, create, and update them.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'll be celebrating with friends in the usual tryptophan-heavy way, and also by hitting Ladies' Night at the Grizzly Rose in Denver.  I've had a few very nice lessons on the two-step and triple, and will be looking to dance now that I'm a little more confident with the country dances.  I'm hoping to find someone there who'll do a little swing, too.

Comments

[William]

I'm having some problems editing a formatted text both with OOo Writer and MS Word. I applied a template to the text using Word, then edited it using Writer, but some of the stylees got lost. Now i've tryied to apply the styles once more using Writer, but they are not the same!
Is there anyway to solve this, other than changing and re-formatting every style every time?

[Solveig Haugland]

Hi William,

I'm sorry you're having problems. Here are a couple things to conside.r When you import the styles from the template, did you mark the checkbox to overwrite? Or is it that once the styles are applied, the "appliedness" gets lost?

I would guess that it would be best to use just Writer or just Word to import and apply. Does it work if you take the Word template, save it as Writer format, then load those styles in the Writer doc, and apply them also in Writer? Then (if you need to) convert it back to Word and see if the styles are there and correctly applied?

Solveig

[William]

Thanks so much Solveig!

I will give it a try.

I am really making a big effort to use open source software in my laptop, but i work i use MS office.
Most of the time it works OK, but when I bring styled documents from work, sometimes, the styles get lost (somewhere!).
I think that if i can prove that one can edit the documents easily with both programs, maybe my employer will change to open office altogether.
That'll be pretty important since I work at a public office in a developing cuntry, saving thousands of dollars every year if we finally "move" open source.