A way to set text box defaults?

I’m using a lot of text boxes in a long document in Writer, latest version. Basically I want them to look like post-it notes.

How do I set the text box defaults to have a certain font, background color, etc so I only have to do that once instead of repeating the formatting every time?

With text boxes it’s not possible, but you can use frames instead: Insert → Frame → Frame will give you a sort of “floating small page within a page”. There are frame styles where you can define colour background, line border, etc, and inside those frames you can use everything Writer has to offer, like paragraph styles.

Another option is to formate one “note” (either a text box or a frame) according to your needs, select it and turn it into an AutoText (Tools → AutoText). Later you’ll be able to insert a copy of that autotext by just issuing its “shortcut” and then pressing F3.


EDIT: To be able to use autotexts with text boxes or frames you need to work a little bit.

On the document insert three empty lines. Anchor the text box to the second one and then select all three lines either with the mouse or with Shift or . Now the autotext should work. The idea to make autotext work with objects is to select them “as text”, picking at least one empty line above and bellow their anchoring point (it’s possible to select just the anchor, but not easy, that’s why I suggest to pick more empty lines).

Thanks for the reply. I like the AutoText option, but when I try it, the Tools->Autotext option is not available after selecting an existing textbox.

@ejbSF Indeed! I’m so used to some of Writer’s oddities that sometimes forget to mention them… sorry. I updated my answer.

Thanks so much! That works fine. Now, when I press t followed by F3 I get a formatted text box! Couldn’t be easier.

Occurred to me that I might record a macro to do the same thing (did similar things years ago with Word) but don’t see an option to record a macro, only edit an existing one.

Thanks again RGB, you’ve made my writing easier!
Ed