Hi,
I have a .odt document with some parts being underlined in green. Now I would like to change the green color to another color (let’s say red), is there an automatic way to do it all at once? Or the only possibility is to do it one by one?
If you were cautious enough to apply your underlining with a character style, you only need to modify its attributes.
On the other hand, if, as I fear it, you did all your underlining through direct formatting, e.g. Format>Character, you have no other choice than proceeding one by one.
You have a limited possibility in the latter case with Edit>Find & Replace. Leave Find: and Replace: boxes blank. Press Format button and in Font Effects select the target underline mode and colour. OK to return to main dialog where you press Find All then Close. All your specifically coloured underlining are selected. You can apply them a new colour.
Remember that in Writer styles are your friends and automate many tasks. Think of them not as a collection of formatting effects but as a semantic markup independent of format. Format is a consequence of the markup (defined in the styles) not the origin of your writing. With correct style application/markup, you can change drastically the look of your document without the need to track formatting. You only change the styles.
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Thanks a lot for your answer. It also helped me to understand better how styles work.
If you made the green underline a paragraph style or a character style, depending on what you mean by parts, then it is a simple matter of modifying the style. Because you asked the question, I guess you didn’t create a custom style.
You can use Find and Replace but for ease of use it relies on you having used the same green colour, one different green will require manually looking to see and that is a waste of time.
Right-click in an underlined word, select Character > Character, in the dialog, select the tab Font Effects to identify the hex value of the green, write it down.
In the menu click Edit > Find and replace (Ctrl+H), click in the field Find then click the button Format. That will open the Search for formatting dialog which looks like the Character dialog. Click on the tab Font Effects, select your underlining type, then the colour that you wrote down, click OK.
Click in the field Replace then click the button Format, select the underlining type you want, then the colour, click OK.
There should be nothing visible inside the fields, but there should be a brief description of the format you want to find and replace below it. Click Replace All
OR. You could create a character style (I am assuming it is just words within a paragraph you have underlined) by modifying an existing word to the underlining that you want, then opening the sidebar and selecting the Style icon. Click on the Character Style icon (second from the left just above the pane), then clicking the Styles actions icon at the top right and selecting New Style from Selection, in the dialog give it a name and OK.
Now do Edit > Find and replace* (Ctrl+H), click in the field Find then click the button Format. Click on the tab Font Effects, select your underlining type, then the colour that you wrote down, click OK. Make sure the replace field is blank including description underneath (click in Replace field and click button No Format). Click Find All then double click the new character style you created.
If you have many different colour green underlinings create the character style as above. You can now manually select each underlined word and then double-click the new style you created in the sidebar to apply the new style. It will take a while but it will be slightly quicker than manually changing them, but it will make any future changes easier.
When you have manually replaced all the underlining this way and then decide that blue is a better colour, you only need to right-click on your custom style, select Modify, change the format, click OK, and all instances will update to reflect the changes you made.
Thanks a lot for your answer. It also helped me to understand better how styles work.