[Solved] Hanging indents won't go away

[BasePlayer]

I am editting a document that I've had for a long time. Suddenly, and for no reason, some of my paragraphs have re-aligned as hanging indents. If I go to 'format paragraph' all the indent values are zero. Is there any way to correct this?

[MrProgrammer]

Is there any way to correct this?

You have been using this forum for a dozen years. Haven't you learned yet that no one can help with questions like this until you attach your document? Until then all I can offer is very general advice. I will not respond further until you attach your Writer document. I will ignore a picture of it. Those are often useless for problem diagnosis, like texting a picture of your car to the mechanic when it doesn't start.

If I go to 'format paragraph' …

Using Writer is simpler when you use styles instead of direct formatting (Format → Paragraph, Format → Character, Format → Bullets and Numbering, etc.) Read about styles in Help → Index or in User Guides (PDF) or searching for topics about styles in the Writer Forum. Copy/Paste from external sources can copy hidden direct formatting, so it's better to use Paste Special → Unformatted Text and apply styles yourself.

I am [editing] a document that I've had for a long time. Suddenly …

When something unexpected happens during editing immediately use Edit → Undo, then try again. Attach the undone document and explain exactly what action you took to produce the unexpected result. This allows volunteers here to reproduce the problem. Reproducible problems are much easier to diagnose. Never save a document in which a problem has developed. If you want to write a damaged document to disk, use File → Save As so you can revert to the undamaged document. If you save a damaged document to its original file, you may be unable to recover from your error without a great deal of work.

… some of my paragraphs have re-aligned as hanging indents.

The simple thing to do is restore your document from a recent backup made before the problem began. Surely you have backups of a document which you've had for a long time, unless it's of little value to you.

[floris v]

Most likely you applied some direct formatting. You can remove direct formatting with Ctrl+M with the offending paragraphs selected. Take care, that will also remove character formatting like italics if you did that with direct formatting.

[BasePlayer]

Okay - point taken. Here is the affected part of the document with the offending paragraphs highlighted.

[floris v]

That's really weird. I suspect that there's some kind of corruption due to import from an RTF format, judging by the content.xml file. The offending paragraphs have format <style:style style:name="P15" style:family="paragraph" style:parent-style-name="Text_20_body" style:list-style-name="RTF_5f_Num_20_8"/>. I then selected the entire text and pasted it into a blank document. That lost the two columns structure for the main text but kept the hanging indents. Maybe you should copy and paste as unformatted text and reformat the entire text.

You formatted this with an overdose of direct formatting, which is really bad. Instead of using the default body text style and override the font settings by direct formatting, you should change the font settings in the style itself. That has several advantages: it's less work because you don't have to format every new bit of text that you add. The modified paragraph style will take care of the formatting. But remember that when direct formatting overrides the paragraph style settings, those settings are still there, so Writer has more work displaying the text when you have the font set as Garamond in the paragraph style and override that with Arial. Your files will be smaller and display faster if you stick to strict formatting with styles.

[BasePlayer]

Thanks. All good advice.

[cwolan]

That's really weird. I suspect that there's some kind of corruption due to import from an RTF format, judging by the content.xml file. The offending paragraphs have format <style:style style:name="P15" style:family="paragraph" style:parent-style-name="Text_20_body" style:list-style-name="RTF_5f_Num_20_8"/>.

In the contents.xml file the following parts are within the scope of a list: "COCINA CHINA", "COCINA INDIA" and from "VEGETARIANO y VEGANO" till "TAPAS". If I select the yellow paragraphs and press the Bullets On/Off button on the Formatting bar twice, the naughty indentation disappears (one might also try other methods such as setting Width of numbering to 0 in the Position tab of the Numbering Style dialog for the RTF_Num 8 style).

[BasePlayer]

That's fantastic, Cowlan. Seems to have fixed it. Thank you so much.

[Hagar Delest]

For the record, knowing that it is a rather usual issue with RTF or .DOC/X files, you can look at the status bar, it will show the numbering style applied:

Status_bar.png (3.49 KiB) Viewed 916 times

Any entry looking like RTF_5f_Num_20_8 or WWNum_20_8 (or something like that, for MS Word documents) shows that there is a list style imported and applied. If there is no bullet linked to such style, then indeed you can miss it easily.
The Stylist panel will also show you if there are such list applied in the document.