Important Note on OpenOffice Writer Styles

I was talking to my friend Simon the other day (who's a fabulous flight instructor and photographer in the Denver area, plus Java instructor) about what to present at LinuxWorld.

We were talking about styles and how that's something that can help people be more efficient. The conversation turned to list styles, and I mentioned that list styles and paragraph styles are totally different. List styles contain only list attributes, no text or paragraph formatting attributes. Simon's jaw dropped, he was very surprised. So I decided to make sure that was clear here.

Background
To apply, create or modify styles, choose Format > Styles and Formatting. Select the right category of style at the top: paragraph, character, frame, page, or list/bulleting.  Select text then double-click the style you want to apply.

To create or modify, just right-click on the white area and choose New, or right-click on an existing style and choose Modify.

Specifics on List Versus Paragraph Styles 

List styles, list formatting, is all about attributes of the list. Indenting of the list. Bullets or numbering of the list. Etc. You cannot control the font through the list formatting window.

And here are the attributes you can apply to paragraph styles.

To apply font formatting and list formatting to a list, using styles, you apply a paragraph style AND a list style. The following screen shot shows the paragraph style that's applied, then the list style that's applied.

This paragraph style is applied to the list.

And this list style is also applied to the list.

Now, applying two styles is a bit extra work so you can link the two styles. If there's a paragraph style that you only use with lists, then you can say, hey, whenever I apply this paragraph style, then also apply this list style.  Then you don't have to take the extra step of applying the list style; that'll happen automatically. However, remember that this happens ALL the time, so you want to do this only with a paragraph style that is ALWAYS applied to lists.

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Comments

[David Sarnowski]

Why does openoffice not apply the list style when you create a list. If I open a document in it sets the style to Default. If I then select a bulleted list it stays set to Default rather switching to List. Is there a way to set this?

[Solveig]

Hi David,

I do think it's weird that no List1 List2 List3 style etc is applied when you apply list formatting. As for still being Default, that's actually the paragraph style, which is still technically correct. For any list you can apply a paragraph style for font, vertical spacing, etc. and a list style for number type, space from number to text, etc.

[Andrew]

I'm trying to change the default List style in Writer. I have modified my list (List 1) but do not know how to set it as the default. Any tips?