Update Selected Style updates style of selection instead of style selected in Styles Deck

[ArnaudM]

1. My paragraph has “Default Paragraph Style”
2. I tweak the paragraph appearance to my liking
3. I selected the Heading 3 style in the Styles Deck
4. I press the Styles actions button in the Styles Deck toolbar
5. I click the “Update Selected Style” menu item from the drop-down list

Result: The “Default Paragraph Style” is updated to match my paragraph’s style.

Expected: The “Heading 3” style is updated.

Should I file a bug ? This seems such a basic workflow, I can’t fathom what I’m doing wrong !?

Additionally, why isn’t the “Update style to match selection” absent from the context menu of the Styles entries ? I use this functionality 20 000 times per day in MS Office when fixing poorly styled documents from rookies.

[EarnestAl]

It is not a bug. The selection is Default Paragraph Style; you make modifications and then update the style to include the modifications that you made. That is expected behaviour.

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Don’t use Microsoft behaviour as your guide to managing styles, it has very rudimentary ability to manage styles effectively. It has only basic support for styles in any event, demanding users apply a lot of direct formatting.
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You could click in your text then double click Heading 3 to apply that style. Then make your modifications and update style.
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That is also not the best way.
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It is best to set the attributes in the appropriate style dialogue otherwise you risk introducing unexpected attributes and breaking inheritance for those. Note, if you do break inheritance you can reconnect those attributes to the parent style by clicking the button Reset to Parent, this will remove your customisations on that tab.
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You must understand how Paragraph styles inherit. Make sure the Paragraph Styles pane is set to Hierarchical.

First, Default Paragraph Style should not be used in your document, it is there to set attributes that are inherited by its child styles. Generally, you would set only font and font size there.

The paragraph style that you should use for the main body of your work is Body Text (keyboard shortcut Ctrl+0); your document will revert to that after a heading. If you change Default Paragraph Style to use, say, Calibri font, then Body Text (and almost all other paragraph styles) will be set to use that font automatically.

The exceptions are the heading styles. There is a font change in the paragraph style Heading so that, also not used in the document, and it’s child styles Heading [n], Title, etc will use whatever font is set there.
You can set the font size in each heading style, or you could type in a percentage, e.g. 120% and that would be 120% of the size in Heading style.

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You should look at the chapter on Styles in the Writer Guide, download from English documentation | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides

[ArnaudM]

Thanks for your answer. So you’re telling me that the word “selected” in “Update Selected Style” awkwardly refers to the style set to the current selection in the document and not the Style currently selected in the very list where I click the menu item ??

I did read the doc about Update Selected Style and it specifically states that you just have to select the style you want to update in the list, without first applying it to the document selection.

I appreciate your effort on educating people here on the use of Styles of which I’ve been a fervent adopter since typesetting my Master’s thesis in FrameMaker NeXT in 1994. I find LibreOffice Writer’s modalities extremely unfriendly though. I’ll keep trying.

[EarnestAl]

The selected style, is the one that is highlighted when you have your cursor in the text on the page. If you single click on another style in the style pane it doesn’t change the selection; it just means that you can access that style. If you look at Formatting bar (if you are using the Standard User Interface), it will still show the style of the paragraph that the cursor is in.
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From your link

3. On the Styles deck of the Sidebar, select the style you want to update (single-click, not double-click) and then click the Styles actions icon and select Update Selected Style.

I don’t know if that ever worked that way, certainly not in 6.4.7.2 nor 24.8.4.2. You can create a new style with New style from selection but…
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It is great to have someone passionate about styles here. I can recommend the book Designing with LibreOffice, link to free download on this page, English documentation II | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides