LibreOffice Writer and Clone Formatting (paintbrush) not copying justification setting

[martinu]

LibreOffice Writer 7.6.4

If I have paragraphs which have specific character and paragraph attributes (font, above/below spacing, line spacing, full justification etc) would you expect the Clone Formatting (paintbush) button to copy everything to a new paragraph that I select?

I notice that there are variants if shift and/or ctrl are pressed at the same time as clicking on the paintbrush to copy, but I’ve tried all of those.

What I’m finding is that while most attributes get copied to another paragraph, the justification never is: if the “source” paragraph is full-justified, and the “destination” has defaulted to left-justified, cloning the attributes does no change the justification, even though all other things (font, spacing, intentation) are cloned.

Is this to be expected or is there something I’m doing wrong. It’s not a major task to have to change the justification manually after cloning; at least all the other things get changed automatically when I clone.

[ajlittoz]

From your description, you don’t seem to be familiar with the style feature. You apparently practice direct formatting which, both, is very hard to master in order to achieve precise formatting and always plays nasty tricks on your back (as demonstrated by your question).

Read the Writer Guide for an introduction to styles and practice. Avoid direct formatting (because of the problems mentioned above and its priority over styles: it masks the effect of styles). Use styles and only styles. Then you only need to apply a paragraph style over your text to configure a full paragraph and here and ther a character style to change the look of words relative to the paragraph.

Direct formatting was only offered for quick experimentation and for compatibility with Word workflow where you have no choice because it lacks the abstract notion of styles beyond paragraph.