Bullet indenting problem

[mfoley]

I’ve been having this problem for a while. When I select one or more paragraphs, then Format > Bullets and Numbering, it indents the first line much more than the rest of the paragraph, e.g.

o         This is my first line ....
     Next ....
     more lines ....

If I backspace from the first word (“This”) it removes the bullet. I’ve tried moving the indent triangles on the ruler, moving the tab stops, changing values in Format > Paragraph; nothing I’ve tried seems to work. Please advise.

Update …

Before bulleting these are just “normal” paragraphs, no special paragraph style, no direct formatting. I simply highlighted the paragraphs, selected Format > Bullets & Numbering, and clicked on the first ‘Bullets’ tab selection which is the small bullets. This indented the paragraphs such that the bullet itself was indented to the 1st tab stop. I wanted the bullets aligned with the left margin so I tried 2 things: 1) ‘Decrease Indent’ on the toobar and 2) dragging the indent markers on the ruler. In both cases the bullet and 2nd and following lines moved to the left, but the first line remained in place resulting in an extra indent for the first line.

Would a screen-shot help?

[ajlittoz]

Please edit your question (don’t use an answer) to better describe your procedure.

Before bulleting, have your paragraphs the same paragraph style? Have you added direct formatting to change some settings?

When you Format>Bullets & Numbering, in which tab of the dialog do you play (e.g.Bullets, …, Position, Customize)?

[ajlittoz]

Before you decreased indent and dragged the markers, had you at least one character of the first paragraph in the selection?

I’ll give you then a more versatile, fully controllabel and safer way to do it.

[mfoley]

In fact, I selected ALL of the paragraphs I wanted to un-dent, not just one character of one paragraph.

[ajlittoz]

Due to complex interactions between paragraph and numbering styles, you should not change indent and left margin in paragraph style once text chunk has been made into a list item.

If your paragraph style does not create a list item (though this is the recommended method, but rather complex for a beginner), adjust first the paragraph properties for “ordinary” text, mainly margins and first line indent.

For the paragraphs you want to turn into list items, push the bullet/numbered button in the toolbar (once again, it is much much – up to seven times “much” – better to directly use a paragraph style associated with a list style). The paragraph will be formatted list-default.

To tune the layout, Format>Bullets & Numbering, both tabs Postion and Customize should be considered. Forget the others: they are just shortcuts to preset parameters in the aforementioned tabs. Customize allows to choose the bullet or the number(s) to use at each level; this is finer grained than the toolbar buttons.

Position is where you should look: the settings there replace the Before Text and Indent in the paragraph style. Aligned at is where the bullet/number will be positioned. Tab stop is where the first line of the list item will begin. Indent set the left “margin” for line 2 and subsequent. Usually Tab stop = Indent but you may deliberately choose different values.

Experiment to find your preferred settings.

The settings can be set as a whole (valid for all levels) is you select 1-10 in the Level column or level per level to achieve an indented multi-level list.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

[mfoley]

ajlittoz: Thanks for that detailed comment. After clicking the Bullet icon in the toolbar, I then went into Format > Bullets & Numbering > Position, as you suggested. I changed Align at = 0.0, Tab Stop at .25", indent at 0.25". That worked exactly as I wanted!

I next tried using Styles > Bullet List. That worked better in that the bullets were aligned at the left margin (0.0) and if I want more space between the bullet and the text I still need to use Format > Bullets & Numbering > Position. Trying to accomplish that by dragging the markers in the ruler does not work. It does alter lines 2 and following of the paragraph, but leaves the first line with the original indent.

Conclusion: Create the bulleted paragraphs using either Bullets & Numbering > Bullets, toolbar > bullets button, or Style > Bullet List; the latter being better in my case as it aligns the bullets at the left margin. To adjust indentation, do not drag ruler markers. Rather, use Format > Bullets & Num > Position.

[ajlittoz]

This is what I call “complex interaction between paragraph and bullet”. Once you added a bullet/number to your paragraph, do not touch the markers any more. Play only with Format>Bullets & Numbering. Everything you need (and more) is in the Position tab.

If you then click on Styles>Bullet List, you bump into the same behaviour as the first tabs in the Bull & Numb dialog, i.e. it presets attributes and messes up what you’ve done up to now. Thes fake styles are equivalent to the drop-down menu option you get from the small down-pointing triangle to the right of the toolbar button.

Once you’ve created a list, use only the Position tab to adjust settings. Never come back to the “shortcuts” or you’re bound to start all over again.

[mfoley]

Thanks again. I’m used to using the ruler markers in Word. Perhaps simplifying this “complex interaction” would be a nice to-do for LibreOffice. None of the posting I’ve found in the Internet explain it like you do.

Not sure how to mark this question as solved. Click on the ‘Close’ button beneath my OP?

[ajlittoz]

Forget your “conditioned responses” about M$ Word, you’re in LO world. Other application, other principles. Here the main tools are styles. They are much more ubiquitous than in Word (reduced to style sheet, roughly equivalent to only paragraph styles). Learn about styles, they allow for fine-grained control of nearly all aspects of LO Writer.

The toolbar buttons and markers are provided to ease conversion but, IMHO, they slow down the process because they encourage to keep ergonomically wrong habits. LO Writer is built on the idea to separate contents (the semantically important text) from appearance (styles), so that you can completely change the look and feel of your document without editing any text: you’ll only modify the styles and in a matter of minutes, the job is done.

Question is marked as solved when you click on the gray checkmark et the top left of the answer. It turns green (not always immediately). Questions are no longer closed so that they can be improved later.