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OpenOffice Writer has the same formatting options as Word:

• Manual formatting: Formatting by highlighting text or selecting paragraphs and clicking toolbar buttons. You also can format manually from the Format menu. You can format characters (font, size, color, etc.), paragraphs (indents, spacing, borders, etc.), or pages (margins, background, headers/footers, etc.). From the Format menu, you can also change columns and numbering. Manual formatting is useful for occasional formatting of small amounts of text. However, most formatting is better done using styles.

• Styles: Styles are collections of formatting that you can apply to a document component. In OpenOffice Writer, you can create page, paragraph, character, graphics, and numbered/bulleted list styles. Writer comes with many built-in styles that you can use as is or modify and use. For instance, Writer includes First Page, Left Page, and Right Page styles. Styles also can be shared with co-workers for company-wide standard documents. Creating and applying styles is discussed later in this chapter.

• Templates: Templates can be viewed as blueprints for documents. Templates store the styles for a specific type of document. For instance, you may want a memo to look very different than the annual report to the stockholders. You use templates to format the components of the document. Templates can be shared with co-workers. Creating and using templates is discussed later in this chapter.

Using styles and templates to format your documents requires some planning. However, the time saved by using styles more than equals the time spent developing and creating the styles. Styles and templates allow you to make a formatting change to an entire document easily. For instance, if you use a body paragraph style that specifies one font, you can change the font in the entire document just by changing the font for the body style. In addition, company-wide documents are very difficult to standardize. The use of shared templates and styles can make standardization much easier to attain.

If you need to change some manual formatting throughout a document, you can use Search and replace in the Edit menu to do so. To change format only, leave the text box empty, click Format, and select the format from the list. For instance, you can change underlined characters to italicized characters by selecting underline for the search text box and italics for the replace text box. However, if the text had been formatted with a character style, changing the format would be much simpler. You would just need to change underlined to italics in the style to change all instances in the document. You can also enter text and select a format in the search field, such as bold, and change them to different words, keeping the bold format.