at times when I copy and paste some web pages into writer, I have found that I can’t reformat the paragraphs apparently because they have a negative indentation.
Why is that happening and how can I fix it?
This usually happen when the selected paragraphs have different indent values.
You can apply a paragraph style (F11, and double click on selected style).
Also can change the indentation of one paragraph, then you can select all other paragraphs, and choose menu Edit - Repeat: Apply Attributes (Ctrl+Shift+Y).
Also can be useful here menu Format - Clear Direct Formatting (Ctrl+M), but this will change many other attributes.
Without a sample of the data, it is difficult to answer. Remember that web pages are HTML-formatted and HTML is not the same standard as ODF. Consequently, conversion must occur.
Among the possibilities:
-
formatting translation is applied through direct formatting and you reformat with styles (which sould always be donr this way)
Direct formatting has precedence over styles, masking style attributes when there is conflict -
original HTML data is rendered other than text (not very likely, but possible)
Generally, it is preferable to paster “exotic” data as unformatted and apply styles over it to restore the layout.
If you want more targeted advice, attach a sample file.
Side question: what is the “ch” unit shown on the screenshot? Is it a localised version of “cm”? In which case the measurements are abnormally high.
Re ch unit, if you have Asian ticked as a Default language in Tools > Options > Language Settings > Languages then you get ch as the unit.
According to What is the CSS ‘ch’ Unit? – Eric’s Archived Thoughts it is:
Equal to the used advance measure of the “0” (ZERO, U+0030) glyph found in the font used to render it. (The advance measure of a glyph is its advance width or height, whichever is in the inline axis of the element.)
I looked it up when I was getting these units in a parallel installation of LO; I unticked Asian
Thanks Mike, good to know.
Unless I learn Chinese I will be reluctant to take advantage of the unit.