On Thursday 14 September 2006 02:40 am, Michele Zarri wrote:
> On 13/09/06, Dan Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 13 September 2006 04:43 pm, Michele Zarri wrote:
> > > On 13/09/06, Dan Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip>
> > > > Suggestion: to modify unknown text, cut and paste
> > > > special selecting Unformatted text. This removes all the
> > > > formating on the pasted text. Then apply the formating you
> > > > want: both paragraph and character.
> > > > If the creator of the document used the font color drop
> > > > down menu to change the text color, this is considered to be
> > > > "hard coded." No style will override this. The same thing is
> > > > true for Bold (Control+B), Underlined (Control + U), and
> > > > alignments (left, center, or right). Some of these may be
> > > > what is causing you problems. The only way I know to remove
> > > > these "hard codes" is to follow the suggestion above.
> > > >
> > > > Dan
> > > > Cor, Dan,
> > >
> > > Thanks for your comprehensive reply. What I did not know was
> > > that the text colour, and the attributes, if manually set by
> > > the user are not overridden by the style defaults. I had
> > > considered the paste unformatted, but this inherits the
> > > attributes of the paragraph were you paste, so for example if
> > > you have a paragraph with default style, with colour manually
> > > set to, say red, by performing a paste unformatted on that
> > > paragraph the text will become red.
> > > This is not to say that your suggestion doesn't help (actually
> > > I use paste unformatted so often that I have a special shortcut
> > > for it), but it is not, strictly speaking completely
> > > unformatted.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Michele
> >
> > Then the obvious answer is for you not to use any manual
> > formating at all in the paragraph to which you paste special. Set
> > the formating you want for that paragraph by creating a new
> > paragraph style with that formating.
> > All the things that you set manually, I set using styles.
> > That also allows me to set character styles as well as paragraph
> > styles. Styles are explained in a chapter of the Getting Started
> > Guide as well as the Writer Guide. Both are available for
> > download at
> > http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors/.
> >
> > Dan
> > Hello Dan,
>
> Your suggestion is right, as long as you are the only person
> editing a document. In my case I often have to edit documents
> modified by someone else (although created using a template I
> designed) and educating everybody to stick to the styles and not be
> too "creative" is not a realistic proposition.
> I actually encoutered the problem I initially mentioned while
> trying to re-format a document to fit the template... It is amazing
> how people who use word processors every single working day don't
> have a clue about styles.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Michele
Then you have two simple solutions:
1) Determine which paragraphs have manual formating in them.
Create a new paragraph below the offending paragraph with the proper
paragraph styles. Cut and paste special the offending paragraph into
the new paragraph. Remove the now empty paragraph above the new
paragaph. (There is a way to do this using Find and Replace with
Regular expressions. You could replace all the empty paragraphs at
one time.) [This should not be very difficult since you already have
all the styles you need from your template.]
2) Or, let the person who added the manual formating correct the
problems, preferably on their own time. Then show them how to edit it
quicker using styles.
You have a problem. That means something has to be done
differently from the way it is now being done. The problem is that
people are adding manual formating to documents they change. Again,
the obvious solution is to require editing people to only use styles.
And yes, that does require re-education. Any other way is not solving
the problem. It will only make it less of a problem. You have to
realize this and everyone else that edits the documents need to
realize it also. It may well be time to "rock the boat".
The style chapter in the Getting Started Guide has an example.
Bold (Control + B) was used in a manuscript of abouit 200 pages. The
editor wanted them removed. The writer was given the privilge of
removing all of them one at a time. Had the writer used styles, this
could have been done by changing one character style one time. A
lesson similar to this one might be called for.
Dan
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