How to change text style globally?

Writer 26.2 in Windows 11.
I’ve been trying to change my base font globally, and so far this time, been able only to change it one paragraph at a time. I had done this before, but this time it seems different. None of the usual things work.

First, in the Styles side bar, when I place the cursor into text that I want to change, I’m told that it is in the “Default Paragraph Style”. Right-clicking on that supposedly allows me to Edit the style, including the font, But when I do that, and hit Apply, nothing happens.

Styles>Default Paragraph Style>[right click]>Edit Style>General tells me that the Next style (which I presume to be the next paragraph, as typed) will be “Normal”. The “Normal” style is set to Times New Roman, 11 pt. And “Inherit from” is set to “Dstyle_paragraph”, also set to Times New Roman, 11 pt. But when I click on the next paragraph, it is in the Default Paragraph Style, which is still in Book Antigua, 12 pt., even though I have Edited to to be Times New Roman, 11 pt, and it says so in the Edit box.

On clicking on the next paragraph in the document, the Styles Toolbar tells me that it is in Default Paragraph Style (set to Times New Roman, 11 pt), and opening the toolbar “Set Paragraph Style” menu allows me to change the style of one paragraph at a time, but not globally.

What am I doing wrong? How do I include the whole of my base text to the new setting? Incidentally, I have also seen the “Body Text” style, which is also now set to Times New Roman, 11 pt.

What you experience is a symptom of full direct formatting (DF) your document. DF always takes precedence over styling.

Consequently, due to bad structure and workflow, there is no hope to tune globally formatting and layout. This requires full revision and editing.

Default Paragraph Style is intended to record your typographical preferences and should never be used for any text. It is the ultimate ancestor of all styles and whatever you change there is formwarded to all others. Standard style for discourse is Body Text.

In addition, Normal is not a Writer built-in style. It is a M$ Word paragraph style (in the role of Body Text) which makes me suspect that your document is a DOCX or has been created with Word.

DOCX only knows of paragraph styles which makes even more difficult to globally tune the document because of lack of character and page styles.