[Solved] Formatting & Styles Issue

[Hagar Delest]

Good morning.

This is a complete new one on me: I opened my ODT this morning to find my file had an extra 14 pages and both Default and a style I applied not performing as they should.

Instead of getting a first line indent 0.30 paragraph, I am now getting a paragraph with every letter underneath itself, or invisible text. Hopefully I can attach a screenshot.

Modifying the styles is making no difference whatsoever.

I was going to do a search but I didn't even know what question to ask.

Grateful, as always, for any assistance.

[RoryOF]

Try selecting that area and press Ctrl M to remove direct formatting. Also, turn on /View /non printing characters (essential for serious formatting, particularly when there are funnies).

[jrkrideau]

Can you upload that file? I suspect that we will need to see it to make any sense of the problem.

In the Reply and Quote windows there is an Upload Tab at the bottom of the window. If the file is larger than 128 k you will need to upload the file to a file hosting site (DropBox or MediaFire are good choices) and post a link here.

[RoryOF]

Whatever is selected on the screenshot shown extends across multiple styles, hence no style shown in the OO Formatting toolbar. I suggest carefully selecting from He to him. and pressing Ctrl M; this will remove Direct Formatting. If modifying the style for that area doesn't help, as you say it did not, this is almost certainly an indication that Direct Formatting has been applied - Direct Formatting will overrule the underlying style definitions.

[Gruff18]

Thank you all, I will try the Ctrl M... I don't even know how Direct Formatting got applied, unless my elbow was leaning on something on my keyboard.

Update: I went into that document to try Rory's suggestion and it started added pages, in front of my eyes the paragraphs turned into Matrix-style falling single letters!

Then I did Ctrl M which sorted the falling letters and put the paragraphs back into place but I can't add any formatting such as italics...

[Gruff18]

Opened a previous file - these are all for my book - and the same thing happened, pages started adding to the file before my eyes

[RoryOF]

Have you recently restarted your computer? If not, I suggest you close all files (do not Save if prompted, unless you have made wanted additions to the texts) and then restart your computer.

Age of computer and hard disk?

[RoryOF]

If computer restart does not help, rename your OO user profile.

[Gruff18]

I bought this computer last November, a tower with Windows 10, so it's approx 3 months old. Going to restart now... cheers, Rory

[Gruff18]

Also have renamed my user profile under Options... fingers x'd...

[Gruff18]

Seems sorted now. Very much appreciated.

[RoryOF]

I asked about computer age as I have seen, years ago, an old computer fail internally and 4k blocks of memory be corrupted by consistent one bit failure, which changed text in blocks in a long document - was it from lower to all upper case. But it was a freak and eventually, by divine inspiration, traced to a dry joint on a memory card.

I doubt that your problem is caused by a hardware failure on a 3 month old computer.

[RoryOF]

I suggest it might be time to run chkdsk /f on your computer - look up how to do it.

[Gruff18]

Will do, Rory - many thanks again.

Can you imagine if someone from even 50 years ago could open up an AOO doc and see these things? They'd think it was witchcraft. Though sometimes technology ever-increasingly seems like a Dark Art.......

[Gruff18]

Also, I wanted to say that the Ctrl M to remove direct formatting is probably the most useful thing I've learned about this wonderful software in ages. Much appreciated.

[Gruff18]

Despite reading through these posts & following all instructions given I am still having the same problems - spaces added to text, i.e. separating lines in a paragraph where I haven't added them - when I export to PDF I get extra pages I cannot see despite having made all formatting marks visible - something wrong every time I try to fix the document!!! I don't know what to do next...

Is it poss for someone a.y.c. to look at my document if I do that thing, saving it under another name & changing all the text to x's, that Rory explained to me how to do when I was having difficulty with page numbers?

Thanks in advance. It's like being stuck in a sisyphean task...

[Gruff18]

Dummied my odt doc: https://www.mediafire.com/file/rtqfa795woh8oub/DUMMYGV.odt/file

[RoryOF]

Your page styles are all over the place. Many of the body text pages (all?) are of format OOO_COPYRIGHT. You need to change the first page style for the text block to Right (place cursor on that page and in Styles and formatting double click Right page style; change Right page continuation style (on organiser tab); this should be Default.

Working from character count I reckon your document should show abut 260 pages.

[Gruff18]

Thank you, will give it a go. Can I just ask, when you say 'change Right page continuation style (on organiser tab); this should be Default' - what is continuation style? Have tried googling but getting loads of different images...

[RoryOF]

I always suggest editing style using /Format /Styles and formatting. For Page style, in that window click on 4th icon from left; then right click on the style you wish to Modify (select Modify from the right click popup). Now click on the organiser tab.

[Gruff18]

I will try this (found the Organiser Tab - d'oh!).

By the way I changed the 000 Copyright style and saved the doc, but when I opened it again, it still said 000 Copyright on tab at bottom of the document... once I get the hang of this I will know what to do so I don't have to go through this all over again...

Thanking you.

[RoryOF]

These two documents will be helpful. I suggest reading them before fiddling further with your book.

Writer for students (several languages)

This document covers much the same ground as the previous document. It will be helpful for those writing a book
http://documentation.openoffice.org/whitepapers/Creating_large_documents_with_OOo.odt

[Gruff18]

Thank you again, Rory.

[Gruff18]

BTW am reading the first document and following instructions - there are a lot of this character: › - in the text

[RoryOF]

Get the PDF version from
http://openoffice-uni.org/openoffice-uni-en.pdf

[Gruff18]

Will download the PDF.

This is an absolutely EXCELLENT document, beautifully written. I'm almost glad I've had this issue so you could tell me about this wonderful guide. Also, it's perfect because I find it difficult to learn by just reading, I have to do it. I'm finally beginning to understand where I've gone wrong. It's like having my own OO tutor.

Cheers, have a great rest of the week!