Don't update style from template

[knezi]

I have a lot of templates and I from time to time update them, but I don’t want to update documents created from them. Is is possible to disable the window asking whether I want to update the document?

It is really annoying because it pops up every time when I open it.

[Curbuntu]

My solution to this was to create clearly labeled versions of the templates. I differentiate them either by book-title or by date, like this:

1. Paperback-6x9-[Book-Title-1]; or,
2. Template-for-whatever-2016-06-04, or
3. Template-with-xyz-changes-2016-06-04
4. Et cetera.

Thus, if I want to work on a new book (say Book-Title-2), I open the Paperback-6x9-[Book-Title-1] template and save it out as a new template called Paperback-6x9-[Book-Title-2]. Then any changes I make to styles in Paperback-6x9-[Book-Title-2] don’t affect the file(s) created from the Paperback-6x9-[Book-Title-1] template.

It might not sound like this is a direct answer to your request (about the update-document pop-up), but with similar documents each created from its own “cloned” template, you never have to worry about answering “yes” or “no,” because the opening document won’t change if nothing in its unique template has changed.

What about assigning an existing document to its own, unique template? I don’t know of click-and-done way of assigning a new template to an existing document, but it’s not too difficult to accomplish:

1. Open a new, fresh document based on the new template.
2. In another window, open the document you wish to update.
3. Select all in the document to be updated, then copy.
4. Paste all into the newly created document. Because the new document is based on template cloned from the original, all the same styles will still apply, negating the need to reformat anything.
5. Be careful when saving the new document, especially if you want it have the same name as its previous incarnation. Close the “old” document first, so that it gets overwritten with the new version. Or update the new document’s name with date/time appended, e.g.: Important-File-2016-06-04-1516.odt.

(We use this dating "date/time-stamp naming convention to great advantage as we work our way through various drafts of an article or book. We’re never in doubt about which file has the latest revisions; but [until the project is completed], we can “go back in time” to any previous draft to recover something we shouldn’t have deleted.When we get to the finally approved copy, we tack -FINAL to the file name so we can identify it at a glance, i.e., Important-File-2016-06-10-1157-FINAL.odt.)

P.S.: Though it required some discipline on my part, I learned to always keep a copy of the current document’s template file open, making style changes (with saves) only to the template. Yes, this requires Save-Closing the working document every so often, then opening it again to see the updated style changes. However, even with a large book manuscript, this takes a few seconds at most; it also has the upside of forcing an extra full “save” during editing, a “plus” for those of us who practice “disciplined paranoia” when it comes to saving and backing up works in progress.