Enterprise-level software training & materials

To really harness the power of the OpenOffice.org Word Processor, and create running heads, tables of contents, indexes, and cross references, you need to use, apply, and customize styles. Here's how:

1. Open the Stylist window by selecting Format -> Stylist, clicking the icon on the main toolbar, or pressing F11.

   

2. Create a paragraph, cell, set of characters, slide, frame, page or ordered list manually formatted the way you want it to always appear.
3. Select your formatted item.
4. Click the New Style from Selection button in the Stylist window.
5. Type a unique style name based on the description of the style. (For example, if you are creating a page style for the first page of a letter, name the page style "Letter Page1.")
6. Click OK.

Once you’ve created your style, you can use the Stylist to go back and modify or add formatting aspects to your style. To modify a set style, right click the selected style in the Stylist and select Modify. The window that appears gives you several options for modifying aspects of your style. Some of the formatting tabs are not available when you manually format an item using the Format menu. Explore the options in this window to make your styles behave exactly as you want.

Besides the stylist window looking a little different, the above tip follows the same steps in OpenOffice.org 2.0 Writer.