Copying styles does not work as expected

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Tansy
Posts: 89
Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2010 11:37 am

Copying styles does not work as expected

Unread post by Tansy »

I am often faced with 2 issues:
1. Copying styles from project A to project B. I do as said in user manual - copy text from desired style, then click Create style from selection and create a new style based on the one I copied. When I try to apply this style to other text in project B, it does not work.

2. Using the Format painter button to copy and paste formatting within one document. Two issues here:
a) For example, I created a bulleted style, and when I apply it, the font and indent is correct but no bullets are there
b) I copy and paste the formatting from one paragraph to another and only part of the properties are copied (for example, only font and color, and not alignment).

How do I fix this?
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Tim Green
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Re: Copying styles does not work as expected

Unread post by Tim Green »

Tansy wrote:1. Copying styles from project A to project B. I do as said in user manual - copy text from desired style, then click Create style from selection and create a new style based on the one I copied. When I try to apply this style to other text in project B, it does not work.

This is a misunderstanding. Creating a style like this will only work if the text you are copying is NOT formatted with a style, but formatted manually so that all the formatting information is stored directly with the text. If it is formatted with a style there is no formatting information in the copied text, just a style name. The second project cannot know how that is supposed to be formatted, because all it has is the name. To do this you would have to first select the paragraph, click on the arrow next to the style selector and then choose "Remove Style" at the top of the styles list. If you then copy the paragraph to another project it will have all the formatting information stored in it and you can use it as a model for a new style. In the first project you can then press CTRL+Z to undo the style removal.
a) For example, I created a bulleted style, and when I apply it, the font and indent is correct but no bullets are there

There is no such thing as a "bulleted style" in Help+Manual, unfortunately. List formatting is separate from styles and does not yet have dynamic styles, so you cannot create a bulleted style. The list styles are simply list style templates that must be applied to each list individually. If you apply a paragraph style to a list it will control the indents and the paragraph spacing, but not the bullets. Those must be set with the list style templates.
b) I copy and paste the formatting from one paragraph to another and only part of the properties are copied (for example, only font and color, and not alignment).
Paragraph formatting is only applied if the entire paragraph is selected. If you leave out one or more characters from the selection the formatting is text only.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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