Change spacing between paragraphs

[HOOT]

While using OpenOffice Writer, pressing Enter after the first bold subject line inserts a full space, but after doing the same for the second bold title, a small space is shown. How do I change the full space to a small space? Thanks!

[HOOT]

Please see the attachment showing and explaining the problem. Thanks!

[FJCC]

If you select the menu item View -> Nonprinting Characters, you will see paragraph breaks marked with a ¶. This shows that there is an empty paragraph after the first bold title. That explains the larger space.

It would be better to make a paragraph style with the properties you want these titles to have. You can make the text look exactly how you want and if you change your mind, you can edit the style and change all the titles at once. You could modify one of the existing Heading styles to do this.

[HOOT]

I'll give it a try and write it solved as soon as I figure it out. I'm stupid about this. Thank you, sir!

[HOOT]

Oh, I'm off to a good start.

Where do I find the menu item View?

[FJCC]

It is the third menu in the top row of menus. You should see the menus
File Edit View Insert ...
near the top of the OpenOffice window.

[HOOT]

I went to Insert and saw Header, and then Default shows up.

Where do I find 'Heading styles' to make adjustments?

[robleyd]

Some reading: https://www.openoffice.org/documentatio ... Styles.pdf

To open the Styles dialog use F11 or use the Styles icon

[HOOT]

Hello again, and sorry to take so much of your time, but after hours of looking and reading, I can't make the friggin space smaller.

While reading the manual, it looks like I'll have to learn more than I have time for to make the space small, and I'm frustrated beyond belief.

Can you please send the page # from the manual, or send a list that a tech imbisil like me can follow to make the space smaller simply?

Thank you, Chris

[floris v]

First, your entire document was directly formatted. That means, you used the toolbars to set the font face and size, boldface, underline, etc. That's perfectly fine when you are exploring what you can do with OpenOffice, but it will kill you when you start on serious projects like books with many chapter titles and section headings.
To get the styles list, press F11. You get a list with four tabs for the different kinds of styles, but it defaults to the paragraph styles, which you will use most. Open the attachment, go through it line by line, not the style changes (I only added a Heading 1). Right click the style in the styles list, select Modify. Scan all tabs of the dialog box. Use your common sense. Play with the settings, see what the effect of changes is. That's a great way to learn how styles work.

[HOOT]

Okay, it sounds confusing, but I'll follow your instructions, hopefully figure it out, and let you know what happens.

I don't understand how the spaces got smaller as I progressed. I dang sure didn't go through all of this - it just changed.

[HOOT]

After about two hours of searching and clicking every tab I saw, I couldn't even find the Modify option.

All I need to know is how to switch the space under the title from a full space to a small space.

I'm trying to do your homework, but I'm still lost.

I'm extremely frustrated, need to learn this asap, and I'm probably making this harder than it needs to be, but I'm not ready to quit if you're still willing to keep helping. There can't be too many other routes, options, or...

I appreciate your help and apologize for taking up so much of your time.

[RoryOF]

Stop this outbreak of random clickitis; sit down for an hour and read

https://www.openoffice-uni.org/openoffice-uni-en.pdf

That is quite a compact introduction to OpenOffice Writer; reading it, and returning to it when in doubt, will save you a lot of time and frustration.

-------------------------

If one wishes to modify a style, the procedure is as follows:

Open /Format /Styles and Formatting (or F11 key in Writer)
A window opens with five icons across the top: from left:
Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, Frame Styles, Page Styles, Numbering/list styles

By default Paragraph Styles will be selected.

In the bottom bar of that window is a dropdown, where one can select limited displays of the styles in use. At first, ensure "All Styles" is selected. Now Right click on a Style one wishes to change and chose Modify from the popup. Note that this modification will alter all instances in the document using that style.

Later, when a document formatted using styles is being used, one can limit the display to the actual styles in use, which simplifies selection.

[Edit: I inadvertently listed Page Styles twice in the sequence above: the first instance should have been Paragraph styles. Now edited to be correct.]

[HOOT]

Over the last week, I've spent hours reading the Writer instructions and your notes to reduce the space. I've made progress, but I'm stuck again. I followed your instructions to the point of choosing what to modify. 'All Styles' is shown at the bottom. Do I right-click on Heading, Heading 1, or which one? Will I be changing the 0.04" portion under Indents and Spacing? I tried that, but no luck. I'm using the same two paragraphs we have exchanged to learn from. I highlight one, and then the other to experiment with, but I'm obviously in the wrong area, because the windows with options look the same. Please see the screenshot of where I am to help you help me. Aug! How do I attach the screenshot? I appreciate your patience.

[robleyd]

See How to attach a document for details regarding attaching a document or image. Perhaps it would be better to provide a sample document.

You can easily determine what style is used in a paragraph; open the Styles and Formatting window, then simply click in a paragraph, and the style will be highlighted in the Style window. In the image below, the cursor is in the text This has style Heading 1 and the style Heading 1 is highlighted in the style window.

styler.png (27.1 KiB) Viewed 1157 times

Edit: If you find the large list of styles to be confusing, you can go to the drop-down list at the bottom of the list of styles and instead of All Styles, select Applied Styles which, as the name suggests, will only display the styles you have used in the document.

[RoryOF]

If one is using the "Applied Styles" setting, if one wishes to use another not yet used style, one selects "All Styles", applies the desired style to the text in question, and on returning to the Applied Styles selection it will then show up in the shorter list.

[floris v]

... Will I be changing the 0.04" portion under Indents and Spacing? I tried that, but no luck. ... Aug! How do I attach the screenshot?

When you work with styles, don't mix it with formatting from the toolbars - called direct formatting. That's because direct formatting overrules the style formatting. That makes sense: you can define the body text to have roman text, then apply italics to selected text by direct formatting, and you get italics for the selected text. You have to remove all direct formatting from that paragraph to see the effect of the paragraph style.
The best way to learn about styles it to play with those settings in a sandbox document. Read the manual about styles, and apply what you read as you read. That way you will see what the text means. Now, you create an abstract idea of how styles work, and it's probably not how they really work.
Don't upload screenshots. They show the effect of what you did, not what causes the problems that you face. Always upload real documents.
Have to go now.

[RoryOF]

Nearly Off Topic!

My experience when I started to use OpenOffice Writer nearly twenty years ago was that it took me the construction of three 24/32 page A5 brochures to get to grips with the use of styles.

I had previously produced similar documents using PageMaker and later InDesign, but since switching to OpenOffice have not needed these applications.

[HOOT]

Thank you. After following your direction, I figured out how to easily change the line spacing on the page you sent back. However, the attached ODT (copied and pasted from my main work page) is different. After clicking Styles and Formatting, only two options are in the pop-up: Default and Text body. After clicking Style and Formatting and then Modify, the top two of the three bold title lines open with Default highlighted, and the third opens with Text body highlighted. I tried changing the first two to match the third by changing the Before Paragraph, but that didn't work. How do I change the top two to have a smaller space under the titles, like the third? Thanks again.

[FJCC]

Turn on the menu item View -> Nonprinting Characters. You will see there are empty paragraphs after your first two headings. You need to delete those before you can set the spacing correctly.
However, using the Default style for headings is a bad idea because other styles will pick up the properties of the Default style, they "inherit" from it. Also, you have a bunch of manual formatting applied, which overrides the styles.
I edited your document to remove the empty paragraphs under the headings, changed the heading to have the Heading 1 style and changed the properties of the Heading 1 and Text body styles to use the fonts and other properties that you seemed to want. Take a look at the appearance and style setting of this version. Does it make sense?

[HOOT]

No, sir, it doesn't make sense to me, as I only caught about half of what you just said. lol I looked at what you described, and I'm so happy you didn't make me make all those changes. Oh, based on your lessons, I moved the space from the first sentence to the top of the page from .17 to 0, so there's no gap. Was that a test? For years, I have been opening Writer, changing the font, adding text, hyperlinks, and photos, then saving them as PDFs. If my process screws things up (which it obviously does), after opening Writer, how should I proceed to format the doc like you just sent me? Thank you, and have a good night.

[RoryOF]

One often does not wish whitespace at the top of a page of text when this arises from "Space above" in paragraph or heading styles. In /Tools /Options /OpenOffice Writer /Compatability there is a setting "Add paragraph and table spacing at tops of pages (in current document)".

If ths is unchecked, "Space Above" in paragraph/heading stylings is ignored.

This may cause a little care to be needed in the formatting of Title pages, but as one only has a few of these, it is more useful than having to hand format every one of the many pages of text in a book.