Trying to create a footer border. My procedure is:
Format > Page Style > Footer> Footer On > More > Line Arrangement User Defined > Click top -border appears > OK > Apply = Footer has top border on all pages! 
File > Save file > Close. Open file = no footer borders. 
What have I failed to do? 
Using Windows 10 and Libre Office Version: 7.0.6.2 (x64).
What is the save format? Remember that Writer has more features than Word, others are implemented differently. Consequently, only saving .odt can preserve your formatting.
Please, edit your question to provide OS name, LO version and save format. A comment at this stage, starting a conversation, will be counter-productive.
This is a description for header settings.
From this, the procedure for footer lines can be derived analogously:
Relationships between page’s element sizes
Had a sudden idea after posting the question. I had saved the file in my standard *.doc format for ease of sharing with others. What if I saved it as *.odt and then closed it? When I opened the file the borders where there! So why in *.odt format and not in *.doc?
Please. don’t use smileys. Thanks.
The format are different and have different expressiveness power. ODF, the LibreOffice format, has more features than Word DOC and DOCX (a “recent” evolution of DOC). Some features present in one of the format do not exist in the other one.
As a consequence, if you want to benefit from the features advertised in the documentation, save in native format. This advice is valid for any application. There are compatibility modes but they translate the missing features rather approximately or may even purely ignore it.
And who put this topic in slow mode? My comment posting was delayed beyond what I accept to dedicate to this site!
The .doc format never has been Standardized. (It is not an ISO Standard, therefore it is NOT a “standard” type. It has many-many poorly documented sub-versions.)
Everybody can open the real Standard ODF file types. The (newer) MSOffice can open them, the free Google editor can open them, and the LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice is free for everyone.
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Yes, there is no “header/footer border” concept in MS Word, and indeed in its formats. You may want to use paragraph borders instead. Or better - follow the “use native file format” advise.
If you have to save in the doc format, you will have to experiment to find what works. You can set a bottom border for the text area in the page style (Border tab on the page style dialog box), which will have the same effect, and maybe that will get converted properly, if Word allows such a thing, and the conversion filter provides for it.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what doesn’t work. The workaround is to use a border on the Footer paragraph style, but it will not be positioned exactly the same though the difference may be reduced to negligible.
Thank you all for your contributions. I’m now much better informed. My apologies for not reading all the posts before I made my comment about my *.odt discovery. I tried to edit it last evening but found I was locked out - quite agree with ajlittoz’s comment.
I’ve made a further ‘discovery’. If I save in *.pdf the footer border is there.
I thought I had provided OS name, LO version in my original question:
Yes because PDF is exported from internal format, before it is saved .doc and features without equivalences are removed.
PS: Your last post is not is solution to your problem and should have been posted as a comment. Note that feedback is always appreciated.