Delete applied custom page style and replace with default style in LO Writer?

[whawn]

Working with a docx file converted to odt in Win10, Writer Version: 25.2.2.2 In the conversion, each page has its own page style applied, nearly 600 of them, and there was a whole mess of other custom styles. I’ve managed to get rid of all but the spurious page styles. Those will not delete (yes, I’ve filtered for ‘custom styles’, that’s how I deleted the various paragraph styles, etc.), for the custom page styles, the delete option is greyed out and the delete key does nothing. The individual page styles do not exist in the original docx file, instead we have a (horrific) mess of local formatting.

How do I clear this so I can use a single page style for the whole document? FWIW, it’s a novel manuscript (not mine) and I’m trying to put it into shape to submit to potential publishers on behalf of a client who suddenly discovered, after having written the whole darned thing, that she should not have applied formatting quite so liberally. Publishers like simple, unadorned MSs. I’m being paid to fix her error. The sad part is that this novel would very likely find a publisher were it in submittable form.

Thanks for reading this and for any help you can offer. I have, BTW, tried cleaning it up in Word – but (insert bad word of choice, here)!

Walter Hawn

[robleyd]

Copy the entire document, open a new Writer window and paste special as unformatted text. Then you can style it with Writer as you wish.

[EarnestAl]

I would usually do as @robleyd suggests. Set all the pasted text to Text Body and then go through changing to the relevant paragraph styles based on the original document.
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I think this old answer still applies, Search/replace page style - #3 by PYS
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But the macro would need modifying to replace pages styles Converted1 all the way up to Converted600 with the new page style that you have defined beforehand. Maybe someone could suggest a modification.
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I did notice, in a converted docx that I played with, that the page breaks could occur in the middle of a sentence and created paragraph breaks. These would need addressing too.

[ajlittoz]

Welcome in the hellish world of “compatibility”. Underlying principles are so different between DOCX and ODF that the converters can but translate “unusual” formatting directives to individual direct formatting.

DOCX has no notion of styles except for paragraphs. Consequently when a non-default (paragraph-defined) formatting is met, Writer can’t guess if it systematic or occasional. To be sure, it then generates a unique formatting instruction. The situation degenerates with pages because the Word concept of section does not exist in Writer (page style covers a different idea and Writer sections are considered a sub-part of pages).

In addition, authors focus on their creative work and don’t bother to learn the basics of document processing, using Word, Writer, … as a modern version of mechanical typewriter (everything is manually formatted) which aggravates the artefacts produced by the conversion process.

This is why you end up with one Converted9 page style per page with forced explicit page breaks.

You can’t delete styles as long as they are used. The usual cure is traditionally to paste unformatted in a new blank document. Alternatively, you can select the whole text and apply Default Page Style. After that, you should be able to delete the spurious styles.