OpenOffice styles-what am I doing wrong?

Derrick Smsith: I suggest you look in the manuals at http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/usergu... and http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooaut... . Note that there is currently only as single version 3 manual, but the version 3 manuals will do almost as well on most things.It is not clear from you description, but I think you are overwriting old styles with “New Style from Selection”. Everything in your text in a particular style is supposed to change if you overwrite that style with different values.If you want to use “New Style from Selection”, first select and region in the text and then create a new style using F11, selecting a paragraph style close to what you want, right-clicking, selecting “Modify...”, and changing what you wish, especially the name. Then you will have a new style that won’t effect any current style, as long as no current style depend on it.For example, create a new document, then press F11 and select “Heading 1â! € style. Right-click and select “Modify...”. Select the tab “Organizer”. You will find that the “Linked with” box contains the word “Heading”. This means that all attributes not specifically set in the “Heading 1” style will be the same as whatever is set in the “Heading” style. You will similarly find that the “Heading” style is linked to the “Default” style. That means the for a lot of attributes, if you change the attribute in the “Default” style, it will also change in the “Heading” style and in the “Heading 1” style and in various other styles.One expects this. OpenOffice.org styles are hierarchical and attributes flow from high-level styles to low-level styles, accept when they are specifically changed in a low-level style. In such a case, any style at a lower level still will inherit those changes.In any style in the “Organizer” tab, you will see at the bottom the changes that are been made within that style. That is t! o say, the attributes in any style are exactly the same as tho! se in the style that appears in the “Linked with” box, plus the attributes at the bottom of the tab.That is mostly what you want. If you have a document in the Garamond font, and you want to change it to Georgia, then all you have to do is change the font name in the “Default” style, and the change will cascade down to the other styles. By default, the “Heading” style which controls all other styles that begins with “Heading” in Windows at least defaults to the Arial font. If you also want all your headings to be Georgia, all you have to do is click on “Standard” in the “Font” tab and every value in that tab will become exactly the same as in the “Default” style. You will probably then want to change at least the font size back to whatever it was.Custom styles are not totally independent of one another....Show more