[Solved] Left justify an indented paragraph

[cafox513]

Hope my terminology is right . . .

But I want to have a left column (without making columns), then tab to a stop and have everything I type thereafter align itself with that tab stop.

Is that even possible in OO?

I've got the latest version, 4.1.3 and am using it on an iMac with Sierra 10.12.5.

I'm doing something special for my wife, and if you could make me a hero . . .

[acknak]

Sounds like a job for a two-column table. You can always turn off the borders if you just want the table for layout.

Apart from that, you could use a frame I guess. Using a plain text+tab approach sound like a lot of fiddling, since wrapped text won't automatically jump to the tab stop. You'll end up having to break lines manually—but maybe that's ok? Hard to tell for sure what you need.

[UnklDonald418]

Perhaps a hanging indent?
Format->Paragraph->Indents & Spacing
Set Before Text to your indent distance and
Set First Line to minus (-) the indent distance.

[cafox513]

Acknak, that looks like what I have to do. It works like a charm, of course. I did wonder if OO had one of the benefits of the WordPerfect I fell in love with lo, those many years back. I could use a two-fingered salute and get an entire section to justify at the tab stop, so right of the date was an entire paragraph left justified, ragged right. Still, that's how this looks when printed. Thanks for your help!

[acknak]

... I could use a two-fingered salute and get an entire section to justify at the tab stop, so right of the date was an entire paragraph left justified, ragged right. ...

Sorry, somehow I didn't realize that's what you wanted. You can do that sort of paragraph (often called a "hanging indent") in OO as well, and you can use a keyboard shortcut for it if you like.

However, using a table still has some advantages; for example, you can enter a date and later apply/change its display format, making it easy to maintain consistent formatting. Also, the material at the left side can be longer than the tab width and still wrap properly.

To set this up, you can format the paragraph to have a negative value for the first line (this establishes the tab/left-column width) and set the paragraph indent to the same value but with positive sign. So Format > Paragraph > Indents & Spacing > Indent > Before text: 1", First line: -1" will give you a one inch space at the left side for the date, then indent the wrapped text 1" from the left margin. To type the text, type the date, then a tab, then the paragraph text. The tab here isn't a normal tab, it merely separates the "tag" text at the left from the main paragraph body.

If you store this formatting as a named paragraph style, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it for easy access.