I have six books that need formatting. I’m wondering if there’s an automatic way to justify all the regular text but leaving the chapter titles centered other than simply justifying the whole mss. then going back to center each title individually.
BRAD
If you used styles for formatting, it should be easy. Just modify the style that you use for the body text.
If you didn’t use styles, it’s a bit tricky. First save the headings. Open the Find & Replace window, and search for centered text - click More options, click Format, etc. If you have more than one heading level, also select something that sets each heading level apart, like font size. You may end up with Centered, 18 p. Then click Find all. Close the Find & Replace window, apply the Heading 1 style. Repeat for any other heading levels, but use different Heading styles for each level. Next modify the Default paragraph style and set Justification to Justified.
When you need to modify a style, press F11 to open the Styles list, select the style, right click and select Modify. You can then modify pretty much anything you like. The Help offers much information about using styles, and all experienced users recommend to use styles exclusively, especially when writing long texts like books.
Thanks, floris,
With your guidance, I was able to figure it out. Not quite sure how yet but I’ll have other mss to practice on. Is there a way to change or modify a style like Heading 1. When I found and changed my chapter headings to Heading 1, they all went to left justified. It would be nice if I could simply change Heading 1 to be centered. You wrote, ‘just modify the style that you use for the body text.’ Not sure how. Anyway, thanks for your help. It saved me quite a bit of time.
Press F11 to open the style sidepane, right-click on Heading 1 and choose Modify. Change any property of the style, click OK. You’re done.
I already added that to my answer.
I you formatted your book manually with the buttons in the toolbar, you’ll have to redo the whole thing manually.
If your text is “annotated” with paragraph styles (and other styles such as character and page styles), it is very easy: just modify the relevant style(s).
To make it clear: paragraph style Title is intended for book title, Heading x, with x=1 for chapter heading, 2 for section heading within chapter, etc., Body Text for common text without specific attribute. You may have defined other paragraph styles, such as Centered Text based on Body Text save for justification set to “Center”.
With such a markup in your book, all paragraphs styled Body Text can be formatted different from your chapter headings styled Heading 1 only by changing properties of Body Text.
You are encouraged to read in the Writer Guide chapters dedicated to styles and learn how to use styles.
If this answer helped you, please accept it by clicking the check mark 
to the left and, karma permitting, upvote it. If this resolves your problem, close the question, that will help other people with the same question.