Delete applied style and replace with default style

[Oisín]

I’m working on a fairly long document (about 400 pages), which was originally a Word (.docx) file but is now being saved as an ODT file.

The file is littered with hundreds of styles (paragraph, character, list and page) which were auto-created when opening the Word file. I would like to get rid of these, because they’re having really annoying side effects – two examples:

• even though I have my heading paragraph styles (Heading 1, etc.) set up to belong to the list style Chapter Numbering, every time I apply a heading paragraph style to some text, it is invariably associated with a list style called WWNum2, and I then have to go correct it manually

• every single page in the document has its own page header style applied, so any changes I want to make to page headers have to be made 400 times

I would like to completely get rid of these many styles, but I can’t – because they’re used in the document, there is no Delete option when I right-click the style. I can only modify them, which is a bit useless. They’re all in the Custom Styles group, so they are theoretically deletable, but (as I understand it, please correct me if I’m wrong) only if they’re not in use in the document.

Is there some way to (batch) delete hundreds of custom styles that are all in use in the document?

 

(Side note: Why in the world is there no Delete option for styles in use? This seems utterly insane to me. Even in MS Word, you can delete applied styles – you just need to choose what to apply in their place when you delete them.)

[anon73440385]

Why in the world is there no Delete option for styles in use?

Something seems special on your system:

and if I do a `Delete`, I get a warning that styles will be reverted to the ***parent*** style.
Using LibreOffice

Version: 6.4.4.2, Build ID: 3d775be2011f3886db32dfd395a6a6d1ca2630ff
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 4.12; UI render: default; VCL: kf5; 
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US, Calc: threaded

[Oisín]

@anon73440385 Turns out it was the ‘filter’ at the bottom that was the culprit: I had Applied Styles selected, which gave me only “New…” and “Modify…” for all applied custom styles (at least for list and page styles). If I select Custom Styles instead, I suddenly get the “Delete…” option.

[JohnSUN]

Just choose category “Custom Styles”, select any of them or all (Ctrl+A work here), press Delete key. Answer “Yes”

[Oisín]

Aha! You have to have the category Custom Styles selected in order to be able to delete custom styles. If you filter them in a different way, the custom styles are there, but can’t be deleted. How very logical (not!). Thank you for this! I am now auto-spawn-style free!

[ajlittoz]

You didn’t mention your LO version.

I am using 6.4.3.2 and I remember the Delete option was present for ages in the list pop-up menu.

If you delete a used style, a warning is displayed If you click Yes, the style is deleted and the paragraphs are restyled with the parent style (if you organised your styles as a tree). In any case, Default Style is the ultimate ancestor of all styles.

This is fine for paragraph and character styles.

Page styles are a bit different. They can’t be organised hierarchically. But they can be deleted. Caution though! there is no warning that the style is in use and you immediately revert to Default Style.

I have not tested list styles but they should be deleted the same. However, I don’t know if this leads to a standard paragraph style or keeps a list under the default Bullets & Numbering category. Try it.

Anyway, this *.docx. pollution due to conversion cannot be fixed easily. You’ll need a careful manual editing to restyle all your paragraphs, sequences of characters, lists and others. And some parasitic styles seem to be rather sticky.

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[Oisín]

You’re right, I forgot that – I’m using 6.4.3.2 on macOS Catalina 10.15.4. Most of the crud styles are actually list and page styles (there are only about ten auto-spawned paragraph styles, which is manageable), so those were what I was trying to get rid of. Turns out (via JohnSUN’s answer) that I needed to filter the styles by Custom Styles in the dropdown selector; I had Applied Styles activated (since that hides unused styles, which is generally what I want for ease of access when working in a document).