I try to save a customized bullet, but when i modify the bullet and hit 'new style from selection" it doesnt save it the way I set it.
Can someone point me to clear instructions on ‘update selected style’ and “new style from selection” and “edit style” functions? I am at my wits end for what seems like a simple task. I want to make my own bullet list with spacing and indents the way I want them, and be able to use it as needed with a click or two of the mouse. Is this possible?
TIA
Please edit your question to add OS name and LO version.
Describe how you “modify the bullet”. List formatting is one of the most difficult task in Writer because it involves two style categories: a paragraph style + a list style (a bad name because it does not format th list as a whole but only describes the bullet/number and its position). Are you playing with Format>Bullets & Numbering then trying to record your changes in a paragraph style? This simple approach will not work.
What you need is to associate a customized list style with a specific paragraph style. When this is done, you only need to assign the paragraph style to your paragraph and the bullet, indents, spacing, … will be applied to the item.
Many questions have already been asked about lists. See for example my answers in how-do-list-styles-work-and-what-is-their-relation-to-paragraph-styles/48402, how-to-solve-particular-list-need-in-style-with-features/63176/ or working-with-styles-how-to-automatically-use-custom-list-based-on-paragraph-custom-style/59692
thanks for the reply. I understood almost none of the jargon. Since it takes expert help and several articles and a whole new jargon to learn how to do this, It seems this process could be made a little more wysiwyg. I understand this is a free tool and developers contribute their work which I appreciate. Maybe one of them will be kind enough to make this process easier. Anyway, I found a workaround.
Thanks for the program, I use it all the time.
It seems this process could be made a little more wysiwyg.
Yes, you have a good idea there.
But you should know that LibreOffice is maintained to a very large extent by the community of volunteers.
Feel free to sign up and try to implement your ideas and participate.
Thank you, I do understand it is run by volunteers. I thought I mentioned it. However I am not Savvy enough to be a developer for this or I would join your team. It would be great if you would pass this idea onto somebody who is technically Savvy enough to do something about it. And as I mentioned earlier, I do appreciate the developers time and I love this tool. Thank you so much!
Brian
The idea behind LO Writer is not WYSIWYG in the end. If it were, it would miss its goal which is to automate as much as possible the process of writing and formatting.
Automation is based on styles so that you only need to set a paragraph style (and character styles for what is different inside a paragraph) to get all you formatting and layout.
This requires some planning to enumerate the needed styles. Then you configure (= customize to your specific needs) the Writer application through a dictionary of styles and you save this dictionary into a “template”. Afterwards, you open every new document from the template and it inherits your styles dictionary.
Working WYSIWYG (if you’re talking about text formatting) – using toolbar button and keyboard shortcuts – is a very bad idea because it turns document edition and maintenance into a real nightmare. With styles, you only tune your styles and the whole document is updated without the need to track every formatting instance.
Read the Writer Guide for an initiation to styles and practice a bit on scratch documents.