Re: [libreoffice-users] Writer paragraph numbered list issue

Hi :)
Yes, Steve Edmonds is making a lot of good points.

Microsquish Word is good at making an unrecoverable mess of things.  What
you see on the surface is just the tip of the iceberg.

It might be time to bite the bullet and start afresh.  It'll soon save you
a lot of time.  What you have learned about Writer so far will help a lot
so none of your struggles have been wasted.  Also a quick skim-read of
chapter 3 "Using Styles and Templates" in the "Getting Started with
LibreOffice" guide often helps a LOT.  It's available for free from here;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
and less geekily from here;
https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/getting-started-guide/read-online-5-2/

Note that these can be modified or replaced later so don't worry if things
are not exactly correct to start with.

LibreOffice tends to use a consistent style by default throughtout any
document.  When you make changes to the style the effect tends to ripple
through the whole document keeping the whole document's appearance neat and
consistent within itself.  MS Word documents tend to have tons of different
styles randomly splodged throughout, often even in a single sentence.
That's one reason why unexpected font changes and indent changes and
bullet-points styles and numbering systems are often such a messy headache
in Word documents.  In Writer all such things tends to be kept consistent
throughout.

So initially you might find numbered paragraphs use something weird, such
as;

2.   a)   iii.

but try to avoid stressing about that sort of thing early on.  Such detail
can be easily changed throughout the whole document with just a few clicks
later - after you've had time to look into that specific issue.



I used to use Word to collect articles from several different authors for a
fairly hefty, several page, newsletter.  With Word it would take the best
part of a week to pull it all together when making as few changes as
possible.  MS Word would make radical and surprising changes without being
told to.

Eventually I learned to strip away all the formatting from contributers
articles before even starting.  Then i'd re-apply formatting to make it
look the same as the article they had given me.  It sounds crazy but it
saved so much time that the whole newsletter took just a couple of days
instead of nearly a week.

Then I moved to LibreOffice and the time taken quickly dropped to just a
couple of hours - and people started commenting on how much better it
looked.


So it is daunting but turns out to be surprisingly easy to start afresh.
It has probably taken years and a lot of headaches to chase down enough
rabbit holes to beat the document into shape in MS Word.  Stand by to be
amazed at how all that is made really easy in Writer.

Suggested rough path - but you may find you do some things in a different
order or don't complete one item all in one go;
1.  Keep the document you have and maybe print it out to use as style
reference.
2.  Copy&paste the whole document into a text-editor such as "Notepad" or
GEdit or whatever (or paste as plain text) to get rid of all the hidden
kludgy formatting
3.  Create a new document and keep it as an odt document.  Avoid using any
Microsoft format!  Paste the plain text into it.
4.  Tidy the document as a whole.
5.  Do sweeping changes using styles.
5.  Add images
6.  Work on specific detail for final flourish


I hope this helps!  Keep asking questions, preferably before looking up
answers.  If you find the answer before we can reply you can always drop us
a hint for the next person who has the same question.

Good luck and regards from
a Tom :)




I'm sorry to have to break it to you but Microsquish Word is good at making
a horrible mess.  It's good for quick little letters and first drafts of
things but not for desktop publishing or good quality documents.

If you want a neat well-formatted document they have a separate program for
you to buy.  M$ Publisher is included in some bundles of M$ Office but not
others and it's horribly complicated with a steep learning curve.  At first
it looks familiar as it looks similar to Microsquish Word but it throws in
some unexpected curved balls to help confuse and mess up documents.  There
are plenty of training courses you could pay for and books to buy to help
learn how to use a current version but not many people use it so it's hard
to get hints&tips from people in normal conversation.






On Wed, 6 Jun 2018 21:35 Steve Edmonds, <steve.edmonds@ptglobal.com> wrote:

> Hi.
> I am doing the same as you (but not in a legal situation) all the time
> and bullets or numbering from word can be variable when pasted into
> writer. Some times the numbering continues from previous numbering and
> sometimes it starts again. Sometimes bullets paste as graphics
> characters and sometimes as a bulleted list.
>
> If I right click the first character after the number I get the menu
> (image) below. LO 6.0.4.2
>
>
> If you click into the number of the paragraph do the numbers highlight
> as (image) below. If not the pasted list may have pasted the numbers as
> plain text.
>
>
>
> Another issue you may be facing is that the pasted text is pasted in
> with a style from the donor document that is different from the style
> that is in the recipient document. I use an intermediate document to
> cleanse unwanted styles from the donor document before pasting into the
> final recipient and this generally makes things work much better.
> Steve
>
> On 07/06/18 05:10, bunk3m wrote:
> > Thank you Robert.
> >
> > Unfortunately neither of these two options work.
> >
> > On 05.06.2018 01:57, Robert Großkopf wrote:
> > > Hi bunk3m,
> > > > The document goes from paragraph 1 to 11 and then should have 11.1 to
> > > > 11.9 but I end up with paragraph 1 to 20.
> > >
> > > Go to paragraph, which shows '12'
> > > Right Mouseclick > Demote One Level
> > > ... and so on for all following paragraphs ...
> >
> > I don't have a "Demote One Level" but wish I did.
> >
> > > Could be you have to change the numbering:
> > > Right Mouseclick > Bullets and Numbering > Customize
> > > Goto Level '2', set 'Show sublevels' and set it to '2'.
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > Robert
> >
> > When I go to Bullets and Numbering, Customize Goto Level 2 and show
> > sublevels, LO Writer creates another set of bullets in front of the
> > bullets imported from Word.
> >
> > Aaaaaah.  This is driving me crazy.
> >
> > B.
>
>
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On 6 Jun 2018 21:35, "Steve Edmonds" <steve.edmonds@ptglobal.com> wrote:

Hi.
I am doing the same as you (but not in a legal situation) all the time
and bullets or numbering from word can be variable when pasted into
writer. Some times the numbering continues from previous numbering and
sometimes it starts again. Sometimes bullets paste as graphics
characters and sometimes as a bulleted list.

If I right click the first character after the number I get the menu
(image) below. LO 6.0.4.2


If you click into the number of the paragraph do the numbers highlight
as (image) below. If not the pasted list may have pasted the numbers as
plain text.



Another issue you may be facing is that the pasted text is pasted in
with a style from the donor document that is different from the style
that is in the recipient document. I use an intermediate document to
cleanse unwanted styles from the donor document before pasting into the
final recipient and this generally makes things work much better.

Steve


On 07/06/18 05:10, bunk3m wrote:
> Thank you Robert.
>
> Unfortunately neither of these two options work.
>
> On 05.06.2018 01:57, Robert Großkopf wrote:
> > Hi bunk3m,
> > > The document goes from paragraph 1 to 11 and then should have 11.1 to
> > > 11.9 but I end up with paragraph 1 to 20.
> >
> > Go to paragraph, which shows '12'
> > Right Mouseclick > Demote One Level
> > ... and so on for all following paragraphs ...
>
> I don't have a "Demote One Level" but wish I did.
>
> > Could be you have to change the numbering:
> > Right Mouseclick > Bullets and Numbering > Customize
> > Goto Level '2', set 'Show sublevels' and set it to '2'.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Robert
>
> When I go to Bullets and Numbering, Customize Goto Level 2 and show
> sublevels, LO Writer creates another set of bullets in front of the
> bullets imported from Word.
>
> Aaaaaah.  This is driving me crazy.
>
> B.


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