Problem With Formatting Tab Stops in Lists

[ben1960]

I am having a problem with formatting numbered lists in LibreOffice Writer.

Changing the value of “Tab Stop at” does not change the formatting of the list items. Please see the screen shot for the settings I am using.

I want the number to be clearly separated from the first line of text in each list item. I do not want to increase the indentation of subsequent lines of text within each list item.

I want to use my settings across several lists. I want to modify existing lists.

I formatted the list by right-clicking on the list items and choosing “List > Bullets and Numbering.” I would prefer to do this with Styles. How should I do this with Styles?

My OS is Windows 10, 21H2.

[ajlittoz]

Make your question understandable by everybody. Edit it (click on … below it then on the pencil tool) to improve it. Tell us what your ultimate goal is: tab stops for the item text or trying to make the number clearly separate from item text and how with regard to subsequent lines fo the item.

Are your settings to be reused across several lists? Do you want to modify existing lists?

Also, describe how you use Writer: direct formatting with buttons and shortcuts or, more professionally, with styles?

Don’t forget to mention your OS name and LO version.

[ben1960]

The system would not let me edit my question a second time. Therefore, I am clarifying my question with a comment.

Changing the value of “Tab Stop at” in the “Bullets and Numbering” dialog window does not change the formatting of the list items. Changing the values of “Aligned at”, “Numbering alignment”, and “Indent at” produces the expected results.

[ajlittoz]

Not much clearer, but I understand that you create your lists with the toolbar button. This is inherited from M$ Word work method (supposedly not to upset users) and, like any direct formatting, causes many issues. This is aggravated in the list case by the necessity to identify “independent” lists. Therefore many twists are introduced to “facilitate” newbies’ life.

Since you can create new lists with different “geometries” (appearance) with this single Bullets & Numbering menu or toolbar button, the changes you make will not apply to existing lists if no text is selected. When some text is selected (or when there is only a single list in the document), the settings are applied to it.

About the settings:

Tab stop at is taken into account only when Number followed by is set to Tab stop. It is then highly recommended to set Tab stop at and Indent at to same distance for nice alignment of multi-line list items.

Numbering alignment is a bit confusing because it is counter-intuitive. Aligned at defines a reference position and Numbering alignment tells where this reference ends up relative to the number. Thus, when set to Left (default), the reference is at left of number, meaning the number will extend to the right of the reference (the opposite of what you’d think!)