A fix on one page spoils another page.

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contestcen
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A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by contestcen »

I have a list on page 5 and a table on page 19. I cannot get them to have the correct alignment and vertical spacing at the same time. When I center the left column in the table on page 19, half of the list on page 5 also gets centered. I finally just centered some of the table items manually by typing in a bunch of blanks.

If I fix the vertical spacing on page 5, part of the table on page 19 goes out of whack. If I fix the vertical spacing in the table on page 19, part of the list on page 5 goes out of kilter. To make it even more frustrating, when I make these changes, bold text gets unbolded.

Note: Nothing on pages 6-18 or after page 19 seems to change. Only these two portions of the book seem mysteriously coupled. HELP!
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RoryOF
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Re: A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by RoryOF »

Probably coupled because they are using the same paragraph style, which has been set on its Organiser tab to "AutoUpdate". Uncheck that setting and see if the problem persists. If that does not cure the problm we need hands-on of an actual file (not a picture of it).
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
contestcen
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Re: A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by contestcen »

I don't know what an "organizer tab" is. Nothing came up when I tried to look that up in the Help topics.

That said, your suggestion was very helpful. I created two new formats, 'Table Contents C' for centered text, and 'Table Contents R' for right-aligned text. That got the list and the table uncoupled. Thank you. The Table Contents R works like a charm. All the table cells that are supposed to be right-aligned are now right-aligned. Table Contents C was not as successful. Open Office seems to be inserting some extra blanks on the left, so the text is placed just right of center. I had to manually adjust all of the items I wanted centered by adding extra blanks on the right. (Extra blanks on the left seems to be a common problem. I get this frequently. It requires a lot of effort to fix.)

Unfortunately all of the column headers in the table are now slightly to the right of center. They cannot be repaired because I get a message something like "Fixed items cannot be changed. Update rejected."
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RoryOF
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Re: A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by RoryOF »

In OpenOffice, Styles, be they Paragraph, Character, Page etc, are best adjusted by opening /Format /Styles and Formatting; the window that this opens has five icons - hover over them for a popup telling what they are. The bottom bar of the Styles anf Formatting window allows display of differing selections of Styles. Of these displays the most useful are "All", and "Applied Styles". To modify a style, right click on it and choose Modify from the popup. Choose New from the popup for a new style. In the Modify/New screen the Organiser tab is visible, and allows one define a follow-on style to give an automatic sequence of styles.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
contestcen
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Re: A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by contestcen »

I don't see how this relates to my last post, but it does bring up an important issue. It would be immensely helpful if the topic 'Defining styles' could be added to the Help menu. Even better, have 4 separate topics 'Defining paragraph styles', 'Defining text styles', 'Defining page styles' and 'Defining list styles'.

It seems every few days I need to look up some topic in Help and find it isn't there.
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RoryOF
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Re: A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by RoryOF »

contestcen wrote:I don't see how this relates to my last post, but it does bring up an important issue. It would be immensely helpful if the topic 'Defining styles' could be added to the Help menu. Even better, have 4 separate topics 'Defining paragraph styles', 'Defining text styles', 'Defining page styles' and 'Defining list styles'.

It seems every few days I need to look up some topic in Help and find it isn't there.
It relates to your last post in that it tells where to find the organiser tab for a Style.

You may find this document useful:
Writer for students (several languages)
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
contestcen
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Joined: Mon Feb 15, 2010 8:20 pm

Re: A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by contestcen »

Let me try to get to the core issue here. Going back to my first post, I said that a change I made on one page affected the formatting on a different page. You responded that the two sections of my document probably had the same format. That seemed reasonable. I defined a new format and applied it to some items on one of those 2 pages, and the problem was solved. Thank you.

Here's the issue: If I had modified the format, then I would expect that change to affect other parts of the document where I had applied that format. But I did not do that. I did not modify any format. All I did was to center a single word in one cell of a table. This caused about 10 paragraphs of text 14 pages away to become centered. The rest of the document, which probably used the same formats in many places, was not affected. (The portion of my document that got centered was the last 10 definitions in a list of 15 definitions.)

I expect a change to a format to propagate. Formats are defined globally. I do not expect a local change in the text itself to propagate. To me that looks like either a program bug or a design flaw. It reduces the user's ability to make local changes.
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Bill
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Re: A fix on one page spoils another page.

Post by Bill »

contestcen wrote:I expect a change to a format to propagate. Formats are defined globally. I do not expect a local change in the text itself to propagate. To me that looks like either a program bug or a design flaw.
Please post the document so we can see what settings have been used to format the document. What you describe sounds like the "Auto Update" option has been turned on for a paragraph style. This option disabled by default. That option should only be enabled by experienced users who know what that option does. That is not a bug. If you think something else is happening and you want someone to comment on whether it is a bug, please upload a document for evaluation. Without a document, we can only guess about what settings may have caused the problem.
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