In particular I am trying to reset a messed up list style to default. I know for paragraph, character and frame styles, there is a “Standard” button when you are modifying a style, but it only works for the tab you are on apparently. For some inexplicable reason the Standard button does not exist when modifying page or list styles. And I thought there was a way to just select a style or multiple styles and press a button to reset them, but now I don’t see it. Is this just a big hole in the design of LibreOffice that has never been addressed?
The Standard button, contrary to its name, does not reset styles to some default “factory” state. Styles may be linked to each other in order to create a tree of dependency.
In the style navigator, when you right-click ion a style name and choose New, you create an exact copy of the style. This “copy” is made a direct descendant of the style and is tagged as “not modified”. Then you can set various attributes to your taste. Only the changes you made are recorded as patches to the parent style.
The effect of the Standard button is to erase the patches (only for the current style definition tab as you notices), thus “unhiding” (or removing overrides on) the parent style.
If the style has no parent (it was created right-clicking outside a style name), Standard does nothing because style is original, it does not patch another one.
Using Standard in built-in styles exposes you to end up with styles equal to Default Style because all built-in styles are more or less descendants of Default Style, thus losing the “factory” patches.
This fact also explains why it is not a good idea to use Default Style for text writing. It must be reserved for setting defaults for all other styles. Standard style for writing is Text Body though LO Writer starts a new document in Default Style.
The Standard button is present in paragraph, character and frame dialogs because these styles can be hierarchically organised (see the Organizer tab where there is an Inherited from menu. For an obscure reason, page styles cannot inherit (an enhancement has been submitted against that, but be patient for volunteers to handle the question). List styles do not inherit either and there are good theoretical reasons against heritance.
Last so-called table styles are not styles in their present state, but templates. Consequently, they are outside the scope of the style machinery.
The only way to revert to factory defaults for all styles is to create a new blank document, copy all the text of the “damaged” document and Edit>Paste special as unformatted text in the new document. Then you must restyle everything, which is not an immediate task even on medium-sized documents.
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I don’t think your answer is correct. In my experience, the Reset button only reverts modifications that you made while the window for the style you are modifying is open, whereas Standard clears all modifications ever made, meaning that the style will inherit settings from it’s parent. Unfortunately Page and List styles don’t have the Standard button, so I guess there is no way to reset them, except, as you say, to copy things into a new document. But that is too drastic.
Actually, if you do a normal copy and paste into a blank document, then custom styles will copy over fine but any default styles should be “reset” because they are already defined in the blank document.
You’re right, I messed up my explanation. I meant “Standard”, not “Reset”. I update my answer.
- Create a new clean document.
- Create styles with the names matching ones in the existing document that needs to be fixed. Modify as necessary.
- Save the document.
- Call up the Stylist in the existing document that needs to be fixed.
- Choose Load styles.
- Tick style type(s) as appropriate (i. e. List in your case) and tick Overwrite.
- Choose From file and pick the new document.
- Save and reload the fixed document.
In this case (resetting a default list style) this is not enough. You must apply the style to text (or even an empty paragraph) in the new clean document.
Thank you; this helped me out! In version 6.2.8.2, I do not find how to open the Stylist. However, there is a menu entry Styles::LoadStyles, which seems to be equivalent to your point 5. Then, I can choose Categories=Styles and thereunder Templates=Default. I need to tick all checkboxes (Text, Frame, Pages, Numbering, Overwrite) and OK. Then I get default styles back in my document. This makes your points 1-3 obsolete and the procedure a bit faster.
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Just to add that this is a permanent solution, no turning back!
Thanks, it did the job perfectly
OK, well, there might not be a button to reset a list style, but I figured out the simplest way to effectively reset a default list style, I think.
Say you have a document where you modified the List 1 style and you would like to get it back to normal without doing anything crazy to your document.
- Create a new document.
- Type some text and apply the List 1 style to it.
- Create a new list style Untitled1 and select it in the list.
- In the document, select the text with the List 1 style applied.
- Now update the Untitled1 style so it matches List 1. (Ctrl+Shift+F11)
- Apply the Untitled1 style to the document text.
- Copy and paste that text into your existing document where you want to reset List 1.
- Update List 1 to match the Untitled1 style.
- Delete the Untitled1 style.
Kinda crazy, but it does the job.
I was slightly incorrect in my comment on ajlittoz’s answer. I said that a normal copy and paste into a blank document would bring over custom style but preserve default styles. Actually, if the document is blank, it will bring over modified default styles as well, and you won’t be able to undo to get back to the real defaults. The document is now “corrupted”. BUT, if you type something into the blank document first and apply a default style, and then copy something with the same style name into the document, then the default style of the document will be preserved and the text you pasted in will conform. Tricky, but I guess it makes sense.
While I’m at it, here are some other interesting things to know about styles and copy/pasting between documents. If you Paste Special as HTML, it will preserve all the formatting but not import any styles. Direct formatting will be maintained and any styles that were applied will actually be converted to direct formatting! On the other hand, if you Paste Special as RTF, all styles from the source document will be brought into the target document and it cannot be undone! I learned that the hard way once. With normal paste, only the applicable styles will be imported and if you undo the paste the styles will go too. So basically, pasting as RTF seems like a bad idea.
There are better solutions below. This should not be marked as “accepted” (== “best”) solution.
Hi
You can do it more simply:
- Create a new document
- Right Click the list style > New
- Type some text and apply the new style
- Copy-paste to the existing document
- Update the style from this text
Regards