[Solved] Text Style for Text entered into Shapes

[AlParkes]

Hi. Have spent a very frustrating hour or so trying to work out how to change the default font etc for text entered into drawn shapes using the Writer drawing tool. It seems to set it to TNR 12, even though my default style for writer is Arial 11.

There is a paragraph style called "drawing" but that seems to do bugger all. (as an aside, be really grateful for any info about what it does do!). I even managed to crash Writer twice, which in a month of using it is the first time I've done that...

Ta.

Al

[bobban]

While you are typing text in the shape: View->Toolbars->Formatting->modify the font as you like.

For some unknown reason while you are entering text in the shape the formatting toolbar disappears. What's worse is, even after you do what I said above, if you leave the shape, then re-enter it to edit the text, the formatting toolbar continues to disappear, so you must repeat the remedy. If you are doing this a lot, I would suggest binding a key to open that toolbar (if you want to do that and need a hand let me know).

Another oddity here, is why selecting 'Text...' from the context menu when right clicking in the shape doesn't have font options, but I guess that is because you could have multiple fonts in the shape.

Hope that helps.

[AlParkes]

Ta bobban

My problem isn't modifying it, I can do that OK either by the way you say (making the formatting toolbar appear) or by selecting the text and right clicking and using the Font and Size options on the CS menu that appears. What I wanted to do was set the default.

BTW when you do make the formatting toolbar appear and select the "Styles and Formatting" icon, no style appears in the pop up window, which suggests the text in the shape is not governed by any style. Aaaargh.

[acknak]

You can't set any defaults for the drawing objects in Writer. They seem to use some internal style that can't be modified.

You can set up styles in Draw, create your drawing, and then copy/paste that into Writer.

[AlParkes]

I have partly answered my own question about what governs formatting of text in drawn shapes. It appears to default to the Character (rather than para) style "Default", which seems to be set to TNR 12 pt, and is one of the only styles that does not have a "Modify" option. Even though my default para style has Arial 11 pt, the Default Character style is set to TNR 12.

[bobban]

Interesting findings...thanks for posting back your observations.

[acknak]

... It appears to default to the Character (rather than para) style "Default"...

Good work!

I guess that makes sense--at least your text boxes match your default text settings.

You can change the text settings, including the "Default" character style and the text box text, using Tools > Options > OOo Writer > Basic Fonts. Changing the "Default" font there will modify the "Default" character and paragraph styles.

Text boxes--as you said--appear to use the "Default" character style settings when they are created, but are not controlled by a style that you can modify. If you change the "Basic Fonts" setting later on, the changes to the text styles will take effect for document text but not for the text boxes.

If you really need text in your text boxes that matches the document, use text frames instead. Normally in Writer, frames are the better choice. There is only one thing that text boxes do better than frames: rotated text.

[AlParkes]

Thanks acknak,

I went to the Basic Fonts option as you said, and my Default was already set to Arial 11. So I changed it as an experiment, and it had no effect on the Default Character style. After some fiddling, I changed the size only, saved that change, and observed that it did affect the size of the default character setting. So then I went back and changed the font, saved that, and it did change it in the Default character style, and it does affect text entered into newly created text shapes.

However, this did not affect new documents.

So I saved the changed doc as a template - now my text in shapes in new writer docs defaults to Arial 11, which is what I wanted!

Most enjoyable investigations! Now I really must do some work...