All One

How to change all body text to one size and all footnote texts to another size in OpenOffice Writer 2.4?

I have a 300 pages document. Most pages have one or two references in the footnote. How do I change the size of all text not in the footnote to size 10 and change the size of all text in the footnotes to size 6?

If I select all, everything (whether in the body or in the footnote) will become same size. How do I change all body texts to one size and all footnote texts to another size?

Thanks very much.

If you have been using styles, this is easy to do. If you have not, then you have not been using OpenOffice.org Writer properly.

Assuming you have not used styles, put your cursor in the middle of a normal page. Select all with CTRL-A. This will select all text, but NOT the footnotes

Press F-11. Within the dialog box which comes up, the icon on the left should be selected, which is for paragraph styles. You will probably find that the "Default” style is highlighted. Set the bottom bar to “All Styles". Then select the style to “Text body” instead of “Default". “Text body' is the proper style for normal body text. This will convert everything to body text. If you want to change the size, right-click on the style and select “Modify'' and make any changes you want. When the style changes, the text to which it is applied changes, whether the text is selected or not.

As to footnotes, on each page, if it has a footnote on it, put your cursor in the footnote. Does the style in the Style list-box now jump to Footnote? If it does, then right-click on "Footnote" and select "Modify". Change the footnote font to whatever font and size you want. Because all your footnotes are in the footnote style, just making a change in the footnote style will take effect everywhere.

If your footnotes are for some reason in “Default” style then you will have to change them manually, one page at a time to footnote style by selecting them and then clicking on “footnote” in the style box.

But by default OpenOffice.org Writer puts footnotes into footnote paragraph style so you should be Ok there.

Note that you may find that some things (like Headings) sticking to the old font if you have manually set the font, which you really shouldn’t do. For headers, use the default "Heading 1' paragraph style. First select the heading, then press CTRL-M or select Format → Default Formatting. Then select the Heading again, and select the paragraph style “Heading 1”. Once you have done that for all your headings, you can change the format of them all at once by right-clicking the Heading 1 style and selecting “Modify”.

Play around with styles all you want. You won't be able to delete any of the supplied styles and any changes you make will only effect the document you are working on (unless you save it as a template). So you won’t break anything.

See http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/userguide3/index.html for OpenOffice.org documentation and more information on using styles.