I know I can move a tab with my mouse on the top ruler. But that is only changing the top line. So how do I move it or make a whole new tab stop for the whole document. The document is 36 pages with this tab being used throughout every page. I don’t want to reset it 150 times. I know there must be a way. Thank you for your help.
What are you trying to achieve with that tab stop? You should use styles as you already been suggested. Tab stops can be set in paragraph style. Set it once and whenever you need a tab stop, just apply this paragraph style and hit tab on your keyboard. Maybe not the best advice, but you could format that style called Default.
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You may not use the tab key often but I do. Why should I have to make a new style and then select it for every use? I dislike Word for this very sort of thing. When I select the entire document or even a section, tab settings is made unavailable. Why?
You should use styles as this is proper way of dealing with text documents written in word processor. Styles are what gives your document a structure and everything else is direct formating. That’s like building a house without a blueprint. Computer can’t look at your document and just understand what you’re trying to do — it needs a explicit instructions and styles provide that. Bold text with larger font is not heading because of that, paragraph is heading only when you apply
heading style. Styles structures text documents the same way HTML is structuring web pages. LibreOffice is using styles to markup parts of your document so it knows, for example, what to include in table of contents and what not to include. Applying direct formating is such a bad practice. I’m not saying you should never do direct formating, but what you should do is be aware of what you’re doing and you need to be sure that your approach wont bite you ten pages down the road
Do whatever you need to do, that’s fine, just make sure you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You need to know proper way of using the tool before you start to brake the rules.
Being an old WordPerfect maven, I liked being able to set codes such as tabs, and having them stay in place until I change them. AND being able to reveal codes to see what might be causing unexpected behavior. Not sure how styles fits in this approach. The question asked has not yet been answered directly. How can I highlight a section or entirety of a document and set tabs for that? And why does that tab set not stay in place if I continue writing?
Well, original question has been answered, you should ask new question and ask that. I’m sure somebody will find a solution which might work for you.
there should be a way to set a tab on the fly for global application. going into styles is not setting on the fly. small docs and simple tables made quickly - it is nice to quickly set tabs for the whole document from the top ruler. to chastise for ‘braking’ (sic) the rules to want to use the ruler as a shortcut instead of going the formal route of styles defeats the purpose of having the most user friendly and community program.possible. ‘bad practice’ - really???
Think tab added to top ruler bar is added per style basis. You’ll have it as long as you use style you were using when adding tab, and if you don’t interrupt the flow with new style. That’s how it seams to be in 6.0.
I agree with the original post. I expect a tab to apply throughout the document unless I change it. I am working on a 26 page document where I have a programme on the left of the page and I wish to put a left tab at 7 cm, to vertically align my line by line comments on the programme. Using styles (and templates) is fine for someone producing numerous letters or other documents having a lot in common, but the documents I produce rarely follow the same format twice, and they just get in the way.
If you have use-case that you think should be inspected and new feature may came out of it - go to LO Bugzilla page and explain what you’re trying to do and what do you expect from software. That’s the proper way to change LO. Currently, it’s just not designed to be used as you expect. So advice to use it as designed is generally good (best) advice.
Except for using styles which seems a pain after you’ve already written a couple pages, I did not see an answer to original question like you stated
How do you highlight one page and change tabs on highlighted area?
Unless of course you are saying that the software isn’t programmed for that so what is being asked cannot be done?
I find that difficult to believe so will continue search elsewhere
This can be done as direct formatting but will create an horrible mess making tuning your formatting an incurable nightmare.
First you can’t highlight pages in Writer because they don’t exist as primary object (if your document is page-oriented instead of flow-oriented, look for desktop publishing applications like Scribus).
Once you have selected a block of text, click in the ruler to add a tab stop.
However if your workflow relies on such a procedure, it betrays the fact you have not structured your text to make a distinction between headings, argumentation, comments, quotations, notes, … This is what styles are for. They allow for easy and “comfortable” fine-grained control on your document. You are free not to learn how to use efficiently an application but don’t draw wrong conclusions. Every program has its own logic. Once you understand this logic, everything runs smoothly and you call it “intuitive”.
Use styles. With styles you have a powerful tool to format your text consistently. Use as little direct formatting as you can, that saves you no end of trouble.
Use the tab key sparingly. You almost never use it. Instead of pressing tab at the start of every new paragraph, you can indent the first line.
I found it easier to just use a spreadsheet than to keep setting tabs. Then I print without gridlines.
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