I’m using LO v25.2.5.2 on a Windows 10 machine. I have a doc that’s mostly pasted content I’m manually reviewing. However, the content has straight quotes that I would like to be curly quotes; the easy way to bulk replace these is to highlight all the text then go to Tools → Auto-correct → Apply. This works great for the quotes. However, the paragraphs are all using Default Paragraph Style; I’ve updated that style to use the font, spacing, and indentation that I prefer. Unfortunately, applying autocorrect changes all instances of Default Paragraph style to First Line Indent style. I do not want this to happen. I know I could update the First line Indent Style to match the Default Paragraph Style, but I feel like there should be a way to prevent the style from being changed. In the autocorrect options, it’s set to English (US), and I haven’t changed any of the options, so the Apply Styles and Replace Custom Style boxes are not checked.
Never experienced such a mishap. Please, attach a reduced sample (1 page max) so that I can experiment with your live document.
This happens if the paragraphs begin with a tab. So, delete all tabs at the beginning of paragraphs (search for ^\t, and replace with none), then Apply AutoCorrect.
I tried searching for ^\t and it said no results.
Because there are no tabs in the sample; however the default paragraph style has been changed to include a first line indent.
It is not advisable to use the Default paragraph style, because that style serves as a beginning for the rest of the paragraph styles.
The recommended is the Body Text paragraph style
Thanks for this. It does seem to not change the style when I autocorrect if the style is Body Text, so I guess that’s the way to go. Is there a way to change all instances of Default Paragraph Style to Body Text? This is a very very large document (imported and I’m manually editing it), and highlighting the different sections and changing the styles would takes ages.
Use Find and Replace and check Paragraph Styles under Other Options
Thank you! those two things saved me a lot of work. I’m making a note for future docs to update default paragraph style to body text style, then update body text the way I’d like it.
Change it you mean? The Default Paragraph style is there for globally changing settings such as Font. If you look at the Styles pane in the Sidebar, you will see the default order is Hierarchical, everything is descended from Default Paragraph Style.
Heading style has a change of font for Headings, so any global changes involving just headings can be made from there
The trick of using LibreOffice Writer efficiently is to use styles.
- If you start a document with a Heading n style (press Ctrl+1 to get Heading 1) then the following paragraph will automatically be Body Text.
- Any paragraph can be converted to Body Text by pressing Ctrl+0
Once you know this, you won’t be fighting against Writer every paragraph.