Styles and Formatting window; Fill Format mode

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. Your report has fifty headings, and your teacher wants all of them blue and bold. Will you format each one by hand? Today we will learn the Styles and Formatting window in LibreOffice Writer, and Fill Format mode, which applies a style with just a click.

First, a new term. A style is a saved set of formatting options, stored under a name. For example, the style Heading 1 stores a font, a size, a colour and spacing together. When you apply the style name, the text gets all that formatting at once. And when you change the style, all text using it changes everywhere in the document.

Let us compare. Manual formatting needs many clicks for every heading, while a style needs one click. With manual formatting, headings may look slightly different, but with styles they all match. To change the look later, manual formatting means editing each heading, while with styles you change the style once. Styles also let Writer build a table of contents automatically from headings.

Now, the Styles and Formatting window. In recent versions of Writer, it is simply called Styles. The quickest way to open it is to press F11. You can also choose Styles from the menu bar. It is under the Format menu in some versions, and a separate Styles menu in others. Or click the Styles icon on the sidebar. It opens as a panel on the right side of the window.

The icons at the top of the window show the style categories. Paragraph styles format a whole paragraph, such as Heading 1 or Text Body. Character styles format only selected words, such as Emphasis. Frame styles format frames and pictures. Page styles set the page layout, like margins and orientation. List styles set the look of bullets and numbering. Newer versions also have a Table styles category.

Here is the normal way to apply a paragraph style. Place the cursor anywhere inside the paragraph. In the Styles window, double-click the style name, such as Heading 1. You can also pick it from the Set Paragraph Style box on the formatting toolbar. The paragraph now takes all the formatting of that style.

Now, Fill Format mode. It lets you apply one style to many different places quickly, without selecting the style again and again. Its icon, at the top of the Styles window, looks like a paint bucket. When it is on, the mouse pointer changes into a bucket shape. You simply click each place where the style should go.

Here are the steps. Open the Styles window with F11. Select the style you want, for example Heading 2. Click the Fill Format mode icon, the paint bucket. Now click on each paragraph that should get that style, one after another. When you finish, press Escape or click the bucket icon again to exit the mode.

The way you click depends on the category. For a paragraph style, just click anywhere in the paragraph. For a character style, drag over the words to select them. For a page style, click on the page itself.

Now pause and predict. Fill Format mode is on with the style Heading 2. You click three paragraphs and then press Escape. Next, you click a fourth paragraph. Does it become Heading 2? No, because pressing Escape turned the mode off, so the click only places the cursor.

Do not confuse Fill Format with Clone Formatting, the paintbrush on the standard toolbar. Fill Format applies a named style from the Styles window. Clone Formatting copies the look of some text to other text. With Fill Format, the text stays linked to the style. So if you later change the style, all that text updates, which makes styles easier to manage.

Let us revise. A style is a named set of formatting options. Press F11 to open the Styles window. Its categories are paragraph, character, frame, page and list styles. Fill Format mode uses the bucket icon, and you click each place to apply a style. Press Escape to leave Fill Format mode.