How can I copy styles to other files?

William311 · January 27, 2019, 4:49am

I have many files in write and calc with all different styles. I would like to standardize them to a set of styles. How can I do this without doing it individually. (Copying a style into a file would be OK, just not going in and changing the style components of each style in each file. That could take a Looooong time.)
Linux Mint 18.3, Libre Office 6.1.3.2.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks.
William311

ajlittoz · January 27, 2019, 7:03am

I hope your document are formatted only with styles (paragraph, character, page, …). Any direct (manual) formatting will not be updated. A second requirement is: styles intended to be identical must have the same name.

Writer

Show the style “navigator” with F11 or Styles>Styles & Formatting.
In the small toolbar, there is an icon with a down pointing arrow in rightmost position. Click on it and select Load Styles.
In the dialog, check all style families and Overwrite so that identically named styles are replaced.
Push From File button to import from your reference file (another LO Writer document).

Calc

Styles in Calc are less developed than in Writer. You can’t import definitions from other spreadsheets.

For future documents (at least Writer docs), I suggest you learn from the built-in help the template feature and you design your own containing your own styles. You then create your new documents from this template to inherit all your styles.

The template feature also applies to spreadsheets. Your new spreadsheet can then be unified through a template.

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!

William311 · January 27, 2019, 8:45pm

I tried to upvote but it said “>5 points required to upvote”. How and where do I get points so I can properly thank the individual providing an answer for my question? Thank you ajlittoz for your assistance.

ajlittoz · January 28, 2019, 7:18am

Points are granted along your activity. Asking and checking an answer are the basic operations. Once you reach some threshold (the first one being 5), you can do other operations earning more points.

The thresholds may seem unfortunate, but this a way to protect the site from spamming (though it still suffers spamming).

I hope you find quality in answers here so that you feel like asking again. Then you’ll be able to help marking answers as “good”.

3D4Play · May 1, 2020, 5:46pm

This doesn’t work anymore, in 6.4.1.2. When you try to load styles from another file, it functions up until you select the file from which you want to copy styles…then, nothing. dialog closes, no styles copied.

ajlittoz · May 1, 2020, 6:26pm

I can’t tell. 6.4.x has not yet surfaced in my distro. Still on 6.3.5.2

PYS · January 27, 2019, 7:20am

Hi

At least for Writer documents, an extension allows batch processing.

The version on the extension site is no longer compatible with recent versions of LibreOffice but you will find a functional version here.

It adds two entries to File▸Templates menu, in particular Assign Template (folder).

After processing, when opening a “processed” document, LibreOffice asks for confirmation of the update of the styles:

The template ‘xxx’ on which this document is based, has been modified. Do you want to update style based formatting according to the modified template?

Regards