How to clone formatting of paragraph with custom style

Hi, I can make a paragraph with custom style like background and borders, but I am not able to clone the style to anther paragraph. Can somebody tell me please how can I do it? Thanks a lot.

Make it a named style. Then you can apply it again as many times as you want.

  • Place the insertion point (text cursor) somewhere inside the paragraph you have styled, the “source paragraph” as it were.
  • Menu item Styles - Manage styles should bring up the styles pane, normally shown in the right side panel.
  • Select the tool icon above the list pane. This ensures that you are working with paragraph styles.
  • Click the rightmost - Style from selection - icon, and select to create a new style.
  • Type a name for your style. OK

The style name should now appear in your list, and the named style is already applied to the source paragraph. To apply it elsewhere, place the insertion point in the target paragraph and double click your style in the list.

There is also a paragraph style selector on the default toolbar setup (Formatting toolbar) which displays the active paragraph style and allows you to change to a different one.

Note that paragraph styles have a limited scope. If you have changed formatting on character level, even when you did it for the entire paragraph, this is not a part of paragraph style. Also, margins are set on page level and outside of “paragraph scope”. A paragraph can deviate from set margins by the use of indents, which will be preserved in a style created by the above procedure.

It can be understood from this exercise: Style templates in_Writer - V6

I have it. Thak you.
PS: Why are you using phrases like insertion point? Its cursor.

Why are you using phrases like insertion point? Its cursor.

It’s a habit. Maybe bad, maybe good. The mouse pointer is also a cursor, so I do it for precision (which sometimes makes my explanations less clear, sorry!).

If two paragraphs should share the same formatting, the best way to do it is to create a custom paragraph style and later to apply this style to other paragraphs.

  • Display the style sidepane with F11 if not already there
  • Put the cursor int the paragraph whose style you want to “clone”
  • Click on the rightmost icon in the style toolbar and New style from selection
  • Give a name to the style

The style will be added to the list. Since there are already many styles, you may want to filter the list: choose Custom Styles from the menu at the bottom of the list.

Put the cursor in a paragraph to style; double click on style name.

Once you have used your custom style, it will be in th paragraph style menu in the top toolbar. This could be more convenient than using the side style pane.

CAUTION! If your target paragraph already contains manual formatting (called direct formatting in LO parlance), this manual formatting will remain in effect because it overrides any paragraph or character formatting.

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