Styles Concept

[johnoo]

I'm finding it hard to grasp the fundamentals of this concept.
Is there a simple document that I could download to study at my leisure?

[RoryOF]

This document may be informative:
Writer for students (several languages)

See the file referenced in this posting for an overview
Structure Instructions

[acknak]

The concept is straightforward:

A style is a set of formatting properties collected together and saved under a name. When you apply a style, the name is attached to the selected text. When OO Writer has to lay out a page or display the text, whatever formatting properties are defined in that style are used.

If you're running into a more specific hold-up, just ask.

[johnoo]

The concept is straightforward:

A style is a set of formatting properties collected together and saved under a name. When you apply a style, the name is attached to the selected text. When OO Writer has to lay out a page or display the text, whatever formatting properties are defined in that style are used.

If you're running into a more specific hold-up, just ask.

OK, so let's take it by steps.
If I go into "Contents Styles" select a style & give it a Name, I assume I can then "call up" this content style in the future for any requirement, yes?
But where is the name stored so I can locate it again?

[Villeroy]

Hit F11, follow the given tutorials.

[John_Ha]

You will find much useful information in the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials, the up to date Writer guide and the OOo v3.3 Writer Manual. When a pop-up window opens, click the Help button for extensive help on that function - it is often more comprehensive than the manual.

[RoryOF]

All styles, whether Paragraph, Character, Frame, Page or List, an be accessed through the Stylist (/Format /Styles and Formatting or F11 key). This will show the style of the selected item of your document and permit applying some other style to that area of your document by double clicking another style name.

I recommend initially taking a simple document of a few pages and applying the predefined styles to it. You can modify any predefined style by right clicking on its name in the stylist and choosing "Modify" from the popup.

You can limit the styles displayed in the stylist be choosing a setting from the drop down on its bottom bar.

[acknak]

... If I go into "Contents Styles" select a style & give it a Name, I assume I can then "call up" this content style in the future for any requirement, yes?

Sorry, I'm not sure what "Contents Styles" refers to. What steps did you follow to get there?

If you find a style in the list of styles (Format > Styles & Formatting ... or F11; or use the styles panel in the sidebar) then it already has a name. You can't change the name of the built-in styles, but you can change the formatting properties stored under that name. You can make your own style and give it any name you like. I often work by applying formatting to the text as usual until I get it looking the way I want, then have Writer create a new style by copying the formatting. From there on, you can get the same formatting in one step just by applying the style.

But where is the name stored so I can locate it again?

Generally you don't need to worry about it. Custom styles are stored in the document automatically; you don't have to do anything extra. You can load or copy styles from an existing document.

[johnoo]

OK, Ive created a simple document using Styles.
I've created named Styles for Heading, Sub Heading & Paragraph contents in the formats I require.
I'm happy I can do that.
I've saved the document & all is OK.
I've then opened up a new Writer document, but I can't see how I can use the Named Styles I created before on this new document.
Is there a way of doing this or do I have to create new named styles for this document?

[RoryOF]

You can delete the content of the document and save the blank document as a template.

But, as a quick and dirty start, do this: Open the existing document. /File /Save as under a new name, then delete the content and start adding new content. Paragraph styles will be available from the dropdown on the formatting toolbar, other styles in the stylist (F11 key).

Details on how to save a default template are given in
[Tutorial] Creating a new default template

[johnoo]

Thanks to all, I've saved the Template, will now continue to learn other features.

[RoryOF]

My experience was that it took three projects, starting fairly simple and then increasing in complexity, to learn how to manage Styles. Once structuring a document with Styles is learned, one wonders how one could manage without it. My writings (book length) are automatically formatted as I write, in A5 (US Brochure) sized pages, with page numbering, headers/footers where required, almost ready for printing.

OpenOffice has done away with my former setup of Ms Word or Notepad and PageMaker/InDesign and allowed me to move to a linux platform, where I experience a stability that I never experienced on Windows platforms.

[etm567]

Hi, John... I am brand new here and have just gone through this styles business this morning. A few hours for me to realize I had to change the styles every time. Until you save a new template. Next on my list. Has the question been answered so that you have got it? I think I could help, being so new to this myself.

Ellen

etm567
WIndows 10 (is there style a choice between 67 and the other? If so, 67 bit)
Don't know which OOW this is. Tried to find out. I believe it is the most recent.

[Villeroy]

No, you do not have to change styles for every new document. Like any other office suite of the past 3 decades, this one is founded on styles and templates. Templates store all customization including styles. Every new document made from such templates inherits all the customizations.
How to work with templates is most fundamental knowledge. You find at least one chapter on templates in every book/how-to/tutorial on office suites. If you do not want this, please do us all a favour, remove this program from your disk and use WordPad that is shipped with your operating system.

[etm567]

That's what I was saying to John, that you have to save your new style definitions in a template. Otherwise, you might spend a frustrating hour or two or three where you mix something up, think you'll just open a new doc, and lo, and behold all the style definitions you had just made are NOT there, they are all gone, and you have to define them again. It took me three tries to get that through my head. Part of it was just me forgetting that I had opened another document. But I did look up templates.... Don't remember how to save one this minute, but I'll learn how to do this.

I was commiserating with someone who had asked that very question -- once he defined the styles, would they automatically be available from then on. And no, they are not, not until you save them in a template. This might be obvious to you, but to someone who has just learned how to make a style and spent an hour defining a lot of them, only to open a new file and have them all gone... twice, it is a lesson one has to learn. And to try to learn about templates before you go through the process of defining all the various styles you need for a project might not work. It has never worked for me. I've spent years not knowing how to deal with styles and templates in Word. Never had the time to learn them. Now I'm retired, and I have time. And I no longer have Word, which is quite fine with me.

[acknak]

Styles and templates in MS Word are very different—or so I'm told.

Styles are never lost. If you define styles, they are saved in the document. While they aren't automatically available in other documents, you can still access them, either by loading the styles from a saved document, or by copy/paste of text between documents. If the pasted text uses a style that is NOT already defined in the target document, the style will be copied from the source document so the text doesn't lose its formatting.

You can also explicitly copy styles between documents through File > Templates > Organize ... The process is not so easy to discover without some help but it's not hard once you know it's there.

[Villeroy]

Styles and templates in MS Word are very different—or so I'm told.

Word writes your changes go to to a default template called "normal.dot" which is even more confusing than a default template you have to define on your own.
In OpenOffice you simply define your page layouts, headers, footers, macros, toolbars and styles for your own templates, define one template which is opened by default when hitting Ctrl+N (File>New Document) and you are done. With Word you always have to consider the obscure normal.dot. Nobody can explain in a few words what goes into that special template and what not. I recall that this is the template which takes all customizations which are not explicitly saved in your own templates. If you are used to this auto-templating without ever noticing the mere existance of normal.dot you have a problem with any other software that takes for granted that you understandand some office basics from the 90ies.

[John_Ha]

See Chapter 6 - Introduction to Styles and Chapter 7 - Working with Styles in the OOo v3.3 Writer Manual.