At 22:52 13/07/2022 +0000, Alan Cliffe wrote:
I have a Writer document in which I marked off separations between
passages with asterisks. Somehow the lines of asterisks turned into
horizontal double lines across the page, the top line thicker than
the bottom, and I cannot delete them. I have tried copying and
pasting text from the document into a new document, without copying
the lines, but they just reappear in the new document. I'd
appreciate someone's help on this one.
What you have is not a separate text item in your document but
instead a border attached to and as part of the preceding paragraph.
That is why you cannot just select the lines and delete them and why
they carry over if you copy and paste the paragraph that owns them.
Note that OpenOffice provides the facility to create such bottom
borders to paragraphs by typing three similar characters as if for a
new paragraph: apart from asterisks, this also works with hyphens,
underscores, equal signs, swung dashes (sometimes wrongly called
"tildes"), and hash marks. Try them out to see.
Here are some ideas:
o The conversion from asterisks to a border is a separate operation
from your typing. When you notice this happen, you can immediately
undo it using Edit | Undo (or Ctrl+Z). This will remove the border
and reinstate your asterisks.
o You could achieve what you probably want easily by making the
asterisks a separate line within the paragraph in the first place. To
do that, instead of terminating your paragraph with Enter, use
Shift+Enter to insert a line break and then type your asterisks. They
will not be interfered with. Then type Enter to complete the
paragraph including your asterisks.
o If you really wish to override this facility in OpenOffice, go to
Tools | AutoCorrect Options... | Options, and remove the tick from
"Apply border".
o You can remove such bottom borders to paragraphs by putting the
cursor into the paragraph and going to Format | Paragraph... |
Borders (or right-click | Paragraph... | Borders) and clicking the
left box (for no borders) under Line arrangement | Default.
o Copying and pasting will indeed by default carry over the paragraph
formatting, and that includes any paragraph border. But you can avoid
this using Edit | Paste Special... (or Ctrl+Shift+V) instead of
ordinary Paste and then selecting "Unformatted text" in the Paste
Special dialogue. Your border will disappear.
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
