Introduction

One of the features of OpenOffice.org (OOo) that received many rave reviews is its ability to use styles to format documents. OOo is not the first office program to allow its users to implement styles in a document, but OOo is one of the first to make it an understandable and easy process.

A style is a set of formats that you can apply to selected elements in a document to quickly change their appearance. When you apply a style, you apply a whole group of formats at the same time.

The beauty of stylesis that you can define certain elements of a document to be a certain style, and every element that is defined as the same style will have exactly the same formatting. This can save a lot of headaches in document creation.

Even more powerful is the ability to change the formatting of all instances of an element in your document in one step. If you determine that you want all subtotals in your spreadsheet to be 8 pt. Courier font instead of 10 pt. Times New Roman after you have created a 15 page spreadsheet, you can change all of the subtotals in the document by simply changing the properties for the subtotal style..

This chapter describes the styles OOo Calc has to offer, what they might be used for, and how to apply styles, change existing styles, and create new styles. Finally, this document covers some how to import styles and manage them.