Text copied from one document to another missing white space

[DrRobotronic]

I have been working on my resume and references for my job search and needed some text to be identical between two documents. However, on the original document there appears to be some white space above the borders but within the margins. When this was copied over the space disappeared.

As I’d be submitting these documents together I would like them to look the same if possible. I’m new to LibreOffice Writer I used to use just Word and Google Docs but my license for Word ran out and didn’t seem worth renewing while I was out of work.

I realized as a new user I cannot upload more than one image per post, so I can only show the original document.

[LeroyG]

Moving topic to English category.

[ajlittoz]

The screenshot shows poor formatting strategy: spacing manually done with multiple tabs and space characters. It is also possible that the document is in DOCX format.

Writer is different from Word. Writer is principally based on styles. Only styles will guarantee formatting consistency over a document. Schematically, a style is a named collection of typographical attributes and geometry parameters (horizontal and vertical spacing, borders, …) which can be reused over and over. Modifying a style automatically updates your text.

Styles are ubiquitous:

• paragraph: base aspect of a paragraph
• character: to override look of a word in a paragraph
• page: geometry of page, header/footer characteristics, footnote configuration
• list: type of numbering and position properties
• frame: relative position of image and side notes

For an introduction on styles capabilities and usage, read the Writer Guide.

Consistency between documents is achieved through the use of templates. A template is a special document (with extension .ott instead of .odt) containing initial contents and styles. Basing a document on a template imports the collection of styles. If you’re cautious enough not to use direct formatting not to modify styles in the document (this should be done only in the template), all your documents will have the same look.

Templates are also summarily described in the Writer Guide.

Due to subtle differences, always mention OS name, LO version and save format when asking here.

[LeroyG]

It seems that both lines are paragraph borders. You can add space above a paragraph.

[mikekaganski]

Likely you copy from a Word document (or a document based on a Word document) into a new Writer document. This could create the phenomena similar to what you describe. Importing Word documents, Writer automatically activates several compatibility options, that change the behavior of the layout algorithms, intended to mimic the different ways Word lays out its documents. New Writer documents will indeed use the normal Writer default layout algorithm. Copying from Word documents, and pasting into a new Writer documents (or in the opposite direction) could happen to show such differences, where the pasted stuff is shown differently in the two documents.

If this is the case, then only you can fix that. Your options include:

• Basing your second document on the same source as your first document (maybe as simple as copy your first document, and remove everything from it, then add the data you need in your second document). This would ensure that the two documents use the same compatibility options;
• Manually checking that the compatibility settings in the two documents match (see Options → Writer → Compatibility);
• Maybe the cleanest is re-creating your first document - by which I mean, start a new Writer document, and paste the data from your first document as plain text, and then re-format it there, so that all of your documents are based on the Writer’s native behavior (no external compatibility settings).

Of course, this is just a guess. Without seeing the two (simplified) documents, and specific steps needed to reproduce, it’s not possible to suggest something more substantial.