Hi,
I know the title seems like a contradiction, but let me explain my dilema. I have had to copy and paste a lot of sections from one document with various styles into another document with a different but single style (‘Text Body’). The original text included many places where there were italics and bold text. When pasting ‘formatted’ it includes all the formatting, including para format, styles, etc. However, pasting as plain text removes all this, including the italics and bold. I did try basic pasting (Ctrl+V), and then selecting the ‘Text Body’ style, which removed some of the unwanted formatting, but not all. For the entire document (over a hundred pages), I had to go through and italicise and embolden everywhere from the original. Is there a way to paste as ‘simple format’ (my words) which include such formating as italics and bold but not styles and para formating? (Ideally, if this could be done, it would be useful to have a selection of what is required or not.)
Matt
I do not think that this is possible.
You should paste plain text and format it with styles. These are basically styles for paragraphs and characters first. Try to understand the Writer system.
Professional text composition with Writer
I know no direct way to do this in LibreOffice. My suggestion would be to paste first to a “less capable” format, like markdown, or html. Also .rtf could be a possibility. As this depends in the used software it will require much testing, to see, what will reach Writer in a second copy-paste from the intermediate format.
From your description, it looks like you don’t use character styles which are used to change the base formatting defined in the paragraph style for selected words.
What you request is possible (I do it), provided you follow a very strict formatting policy based on styles. This is frequently associated with templates upon which you can base your documents. A template is a special LO file type intended to contain primarily style definitions. This guarantees that all styles with same name are identical across documents (if you have the wisdom not to modify them in any documents and do it only in the template).
Your text blocks can also be formatted with styles unique to the source document. In the case of character styles, you can cancel their effect in the destination document by modifying their definition to revert them to neutral state (equivalent to No Character Style) if you don’t want their effect.
If your "sections" are quite large, you can structure your document "library" into individual files corresponding to the reused "sections". Once again, bsing them on the same template will guarantee formatting consistency.
The documents using the "library" is a **master document**. A master document has all the properties of a standard document, plus the ability to "reference" *sub-documents* taken in your library. The text will appear where the "reference" is located. If you modify a sub-document, the master document is updated next time you open it.
Maybe it is better to apply character styles in the source file (with Find and Replace), clear direct formatting, and then paste in your document.
If the receiving document has a paragraph style of the same name as the donor document, then the pasted text will take the receiving document’s defined style, the same for character styles.
You can use Find and Replace to change all instances of one style to another style, e.g. find style Normal and replace with style Body Text
Thanks for these suggestions. Unfortunately, I did not receive any notification that anyone had responded. So apologies for the length of time it has taken me to get back.
Some of these suggestions are, or could be, relevant to some of the copying that I do, but not all - perhaps not most. Much of what I transfer comes from external sources, documents that I have already written, or excessively long pieces. However, I will bear in mind much of what is suggested.
If there is no way to do what I want, then so-be-it. It was worth the query. Thanks again for all the comments.
Matt
You’re welcome. Delete your last comment and I’ll delete mine so that the “non-answer” is fully cleared.