Documentation/OOoAuthors User Manual/Getting Started/Creating new (custom) styles

Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 2.x

Chapter 13: Working with Styles

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• Applying styles
• Modifying styles
• Creating new (custom) styles
• Copying and moving styles
• Deleting styles

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Creating new (custom) styles

You may want to add some new styles. You can do this in two ways:

• Creating a new style using the Style dialog
• Creating a new style from a selection

Creating a new style using the Style dialog

To create a new style using the Style dialog, right-click in the Styles and Formatting window and select New from the pop-up menu.

If you want your new style to be linked with an existing style, first select that style and then right-click and select New.

If you link styles, then when you change the base style (for example, by changing the font from Times to Helvetica), all the linked fonts will change as well. Sometimes this is exactly what you want; other times you do not want the changes to apply to all the linked styles. It pays to plan ahead.

The dialogs and choices are the same for defining new styles and for modifying existing styles. See the chapters on styles in the user guides for details.

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Creating a new style from a selection

You can create a new style by copying an existing style. This new style applies only to this document; it will not be saved in the template.

1. Open the Styles and Formatting window and choose the type of style you want to create.
2. In the document, select the item you want to save as a style.
3. In the Styles and Formatting window, click on the New Style from Selection icon.
4. In the Create Style dialog (Figure 5), type a name for the new style. The list shows the names of existing custom styles of the selected type. Click OK to save the new style.

File:CreateStyle.png

Figure 5: Creating a new style from a selection.

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Dragging and dropping a selection to create a style

You can drag and drop a text selection into the Styles and Formatting window to create a new style.

Writer

Select some text and drag it to the Styles and Formatting window. If Paragraph Styles are active, the paragraph style will be added to the list. If Character Styles are active, the character style will be added to the list.

Calc

Drag a cell selection to the Styles and Formatting window to create cell styles.

Draw/Impress

Select and drag drawing objects to the Styles and Formatting window to create graphics styles.

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