[Solved] Undiscoverable text font

[mrk4372]

I'm new to Open Office. I copied text from a web page and copied it into Writer. The text uses Times New Roman and Courier New fonts, which I'd like to change. Using Search & Replace I move the cursor to the Search For box, set Format to Font = Courier New, and click Find All. Writer doesn't find any instances of Courier New font, even though I can see them.

The content of the Apply Style box changes in 3 ways as I click on sections of the text.

Most of the text is in Times New Roman, and the Apply Style box says it's "Body Text".
Some text is in Times New Roman, Bold, and the Apply Style box says it's "Heading 3".
Some text is in Courier New, and the Apply Style box says it's "Preformatted Text".

Can anyone explain:

(1) Why Search & Replace is unable to find the Courier New text?

(2) How to make the Courier New text discoverable in order to change the font?

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

When pasting from the web, better paste as unformatted text and then redo the formatting.
Maybe that font (Courier New) is not installed on your system and it has been replaced by another one in your document.
Can you provide the url of the text you want to paste?

[mrk4372]

A section of text was copied from https://adamtheautomator.com/robocopy-the-ultimate/

All references to command-line instructions there appear in highlighted Courier New format.



(only a section

[Bill]

Using Format > Font only works if the font is applied directly, but the fonts you're searching for are applied by a style. You don't need to search for the fonts. You need to change the fonts in the "Text body", "Heading 3" and "Preformatted Text" paragraph styles. You can right-click a paragraph and select "Edit paragraph style" to open the paragraph style dialog for the style applied to the paragraph. Click the Font tab on the dialog and change the font there.

[mrk4372]

Bill's advice allowed me to change ALL Courier New fonts in 'Preformatted Text' paragraph style. But....

I'd like to change SELECTED instances of the Courier New font. For example, to have references to a source-drive shown in red, references to a destination drive shown in green.

I'm new to Writer, but if I write text myself I find it relatively easy to use different fonts and different text colours within a document. Is this because my text is under one default style?

If so, can text pasted from a web page be reformatted so it's all under one style - retaining different fonts that make for easy understanding, and allowing short sections of text to be coloured, no matter what the font is?

The earlier suggestion to paste as unformatted text, then reformat by hand, would be rather time-consuming.

[Hagar Delest]

For what it's worth, LO is more robust with character styles: if you clear formatting (Ctrl+M) in AOO, it will clear the character style whereas it remains in LO.
So (in LO) if you use Search & Replace to select the strings, then apply a character style, it should meet your requirements.

[mrk4372]

It was strange to find there are different versions of Writer that behave in different ways, but following Hagar's advice the Libre version was used and the problem was solved. Thanks to all who helped with this problem.

[Hagar Delest]

Great. Don't forget to update your signature: How to update your software information signature.