LO Writer thinks I want to use Liberation mono font all the time

Hi. I’ve never purposefully used Liberation mono font. My default font for everything is Arial.
Every now and then, Writer decides my font would look better as Liberation mono. Or if I clear formatting, or change to text body or default paragraph style, and it changes to Liberation mono. I’ve never set any style to Liberation mono or ever chosen it to write anything. Any ideas what I can do?

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Templates and styles. Without templates and styles using an office suite makes no sense.

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I also hate Liberation and this is what I did, suggested elsewhere in the forum.

  1. Go into Tools - Options - LO Writer - Basic Fonts [Western] Change your font here.
  2. Make a style template and set it up the way you want it. I usually go through and change any existing styles that I use often.
  3. Save this template as a template type, i.e. .ott for .odt format, .ott for .dotx format [this is the choice you make in the drop-down as you save, depending on what kind of doc you will use it for. Put it where you can easily find it.
  4. When you create your new document, double click this file you just made. A new, untitled document is created with your settings [mostly, you may have to check and change some settings again]
  5. Save this document as the filename you want, in the format you want.
  6. Repeat for every document of this type.
    LO usually tells me I can’t save where the program lives, on my C: drive. So I keep a Documents/LibreOffice directory for all my templates, custom dictionaries, etc that I can’t modify directly in the program. There is a way to modify the default template in LO but I haven’t been able to get it to save, and finding the correct directory…easier to put a template where I can find it without Windows telling me I don’t have permission… Most people are fine with the dictionary without putting another one someplace, but I make a lot of mistakes and create a lot of alien words, so I can open the .dic as a text file and make bulk changes. But, that’s how I deal with Liberation. I still have 600 documents that having the new template doesn’t help, and I have to do those by hand. Sigh. I wish we could assign a custom template to an existing document.

Try to ask a question, but create your own thread…

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I’m using this for several project files and it works nicely. However I learned this templates are not “connected” to the templates inside LibreOffice, so when you change a master template your files will not ask if they shall update on opening according to the renewed template.

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So, how do we connect this template to the templates within LibreOffice? Or edit the master one? Hoping someone knows this answer :slight_smile:

Good idea. I’ll do that :slight_smile:

Please take a look into

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Writer uses Liberation Mono font automatically for text-only (.TXT) files. Sometimes such files originate from creation of MS Word documents using New context menu in Explorer / on desktop; and until recently, the 0-byte files (with DOCX extension) that MS Office created in that case were treated as plain text files (because they aren’t proper DOCX packages).

In that case, opening such a plain text file, working with it, and saving (not “Saving As”), produces a TXT file again (the extension doesn’t matter). Unless you explicitly Save As, and choose the proper file type in the dialog, all the formatting will always be reset, and the next time, it will open with Liberation Mono again.

~Recently, since version 7.1, LibreOffice considers file extension when opening 0-byte files (tdf#123476). So there should not be new files having such a problem. Of course, the existing non-empty plain text files, even having ODT or DOCX extension, need a proper Save As, as explained above.

Also, there’s tdf#152285 - maybe it’s related?

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I know I can change the font on Notepad to another font, and it’s persistent on my PC under Win 10. But, I still get Liberation anytime I copy and paste into a fresh docx or an old, converted-to docx. Hmmm.

I looked at the bug report you gave–thanks! But, it’s been a long time since I did any programming-like activities [like trying to help my boss trace COBOL spaghetti code that I only participated in at one job for a very short time]. Not sure if it’s related to this.

I just want to be able to change the default to Georgia, because 90% of my time, I’m using a file that is a manuscript, unless I’m researching and copying and pasting from the Internet to refer to later. ATM I am spending a lot of time changing headings. Font. Margins. In manuscript after manuscript. Would really love to be able to change these once and done.

But, I will try Save As instead of Save and see if this might help! Thanks! I am in the process of saving my .odt’s and .docs as .docx. I used an app to change them in bulk. Maybe I should have gone one by one as I’m having to do anyway. Good food for thought.

Unless you really have to, the general advise is: always use application’s native file formats; in case of LibreOffice it’s ODF (ODT, ODS, …). Using DOC or DOCX will inevitably result in formatting hell.

LibreOffice can do that with its command line, like

soffice --convert-to docx *.odt
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That is a completely different task. Simple text has actually no font set at all, si the user/program used for viewing sets the font to use. So I may see a different font for the same file.
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On the other side for TeX, Writer, Word, pdf-files the goal is to show the same or similiar layout on different computers. TeX/dvi and pdf try the “the same”-approach while Word Writer may reflow to fit paper/printwr.

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Use paste special to copy without formatting. You will have to re-apply headings, but font, margins will be according to your settings.

SaveAs and Save do the same. The first allows you to change name and type, the latter uses the previously set name and type.

So not the same after all? :wink: See above for the context why Save As was suggested to make sure the proper file type is used.

My suggestion is to start with an odf-file, then drag in the necessary data. Then save-as is only my versioned-backup. And as I never switched of the warning when saving in non-odf-files this is enough for me.
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(However - there is one exception of the rule, but I guess I have to file a bug for that.)