I use my laptop with LibreOffice as a back-up word processor when I’m away from home. I use hanging indents regularly in my documents but when I edit an existing Microsoft Word document using LibreOffice, then transfer it back to my home PC, I find all the hanging indents have been converted to simple tabs. I then have to spend time converting them back to hanging indents. How can I prevent this from happening, short of ditching Libre Office altogether and getting Word onto this laptop?
Edit your question to attach a one-paragraph sample file with the problem (use the paperclip tool once in editing mode).
Mention your OS and Word/LO versions.
The round trip with .docx, .doc, and rtf worked fine for me, Windows 10 Pro 2004, LO 6.4.4.2, Word 2010, both with hanging and plain indents and saving with modifications each time. I see that I can increase the indent in MS Word by using tab. My guess is you have been doing this in LibreOffice rather than changing the values in the sidebar or Format paragraph. In LibreOffice, if you insert a tab, you get a tab. So you must either work in LO the way it works or you must buy a second copy of MS Word.
I was a bit abrupt last night. Instead of using tab key to implement an indent you could just select a paragraph with the indent you want, then click on the Clone Formatting button. Hold down Ctrl (or Ctrl+Shift ) and paste your new paragraph with the paragraph style of the original paragraph.
Better still is to set up your Styles so that an indented paragraphis set as a Style, e.g. Body Text, or create a new style and call it Body Indent or something so it is easy to find. Have it follow a Heading and then all happens automatically. In my experience, it is easier to set up styles in LO than Word and once set they go through the round trip conversion OK.
Built-in Hanging Indent is intended for that and is available for customisation.