Tab doesn't create a new bullet level

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Carnie
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 1:20 am

Tab doesn't create a new bullet level

Post by Carnie »

Hey, so I've got a really weird problem in Impress. I'm trying to make a presentation, with layered bullet points. I can "turn on" bullet points, in the sense that it puts a bullet at the front of each line of the highlighted section, and pressing ENTER creates a new line with a bullet at the front; but when I press TAB on a new line, all it does is insert a tab character (as in, a "big space") as though this were Notepad. I've tried to fix this through "Format -> Bullets and Numbering", but can't find anything that relates to it; as far as I can tell, this shouldn't be happening in the first place. Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this, and how to fix it? This presentation is kind of time sensitive so I'd really appreciate it if I could get an answer quickly. Thanks!!!
OpenOffice 4.1.0 on Windows 8
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acknak
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Re: Tab doesn't create a new bullet level

Post by acknak »

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

Sorry, debugging problems with Impress' outline mode is beyond my skill. It seems to work ok for me.

One strategy for fixing it: move the cursor to the start (Home) of the problem paragraph then press Backspace to join it to the previous paragraph, then press Enter again.

You may also get a clue as to what's happening by opening the "Styles and Formatting" window (F11) or switch the sidebar to the Styles panel, and watch what style is highlighted as you move around the outline: the style should match the outline level, "Outline 1".

If none of that helps, copy the slide to a new presentation and attach that document here so we can take a look at it.
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Carnie
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 1:20 am

Re: Tab doesn't create a new bullet level

Post by Carnie »

...None of that about "Style and Formatting" did anything, but when I saved it as a .ppt file (as opposed to .odp) and re-opened it, bullets started working. The problem didn't go away after just saving it as a .ppt though, I had to actually close it and re-open it. Weirdest thing. Does the .odp file format handle bullets differently or something?

Saving the file back as a .odp doesn't seem to make the problem come back.

If I re-open the original file, the original .odp, pressing TAB now makes the indent increase slightly (way less than when it's working properly), and the symbol doesn't change. I tried to attach a stripped-down version of that file, in the hopes that in can provide some insight into WTF is going on here... and found that the file size (for a single very simple slide) is about 1.2 MB, while the maximum attachment size allowed is 128 KB. Notably, the full presentation, which has ~10 slides and much more text in each slide, is only 15 KB larger. Am I doing something wrong to make the filesize so big?

As you can probably tell, I haven't worked with OpenOffice Impress or PowerPoint in a long time... :roll:

In any case, I appear to effectively have the problem solved, as long as I work in .ppt format; but still have no idea why it doesn't work unless I save it as a .ppt file.
OpenOffice 4.1.0 on Windows 8
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