https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94989
--- Comment #14 from Tex2002ans <tex2002ans+libreoff...@gmail.com> --- "Select All Text with Similar Formatting" is a killer feature of Microsoft Word. I use it all the time when: - Cleaning up direct formatting - ESPECIALLY in converted (or poorly formatted) documents. and use it to quickly: - Map Direct Formatting -> Styles. - Correct Problem X in one swoop (similar to a super quick "Find All"). In Word, this becomes: - A few button presses + can be done in a few seconds. In LibreOffice, this is: - Wrestling with the Find & Replace (Ctrl+H) menu + various mixes of the "Format"+"Attribute"+"No Format" buttons... ... and hoping you got it right. (Very error-prone.) Currently, when you click the mouse into something: - The computer KNOWS what the format settings are + can go searching for an exact match!!! - - - - - - - - For one use-case, see my recent comment in: - https://www.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/18t2551/writer_whats_a_good_way_to_change_all_bullet/kfe7g5m/ - Especially "Side Note #4". While the original user wanted to: - Select all bullet points / lists in their document I use it to: - - - CASE #1: SELECT ALL CHAPTER "HEADINGS"/"SUBHEADINGS" For example, User A consistently chose: - CENTER + BOLD + 16 pt to create their chapter titles. In Word: 1. Click in the paragraph. 2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting". - This selects all "headings". 3. Click on the "Heading 2" Style. BOOM, now all my Chapters are marked properly. [... Repeat for subchapters, and sub-subchapters, etc. ...] KEY NOTE #1: Especially for conversions from other formats, like using: - Calibre EPUB->DOCX conversions - Finereader PDF->ODT conversions all headings might not have proper Styles... but at least they are all CONSISTENTLY carrying the same direct formatting information. KEY NOTE #1.1: This is also non-contiguous "Find All"-type selection too, but WAY easier/faster than trying to do similar through the current Find & Replace (Ctrl+H). - - - CASE #2: SELECT ALL "ITALICS" A conversion/export from another program may have done a: - "Times New Roman/Italics" font instead of using actual italics. In Word, currently, this is a: 1. Click in the "italics" word. 2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting". - All matching spans of text are selected. 3. Click on the "Emphasis" Character Style. - Or push Ctrl+I or "I" button. Right now, in LibreOffice, you have to wrestle with all sorts of: 1. Find & Replace (Ctrl+H) 2. "Format" button. --- Hope you selected the right attributes. 3. "Find All" 4. Scroll through the document, hope you got your settings correct. 5. Click on the "Emphasis" Character Style. - Or push Ctrl+I or "I" button. (Then, it's only after you are scrolling through the document, you find out WHOOPS, you missed edge-case X, Y, or Z... so now you have to try to undo and find the equivalent buried setting/menu/option in LO.) KEY NOTE #2: In Word's Step 1+2, if I select an italics word in the BODY TEXT, Word WON'T match italics in a heading or elsewhere. (This is, super key for progressively cleaning up documents in passes.) In LibreOffice, this find/select all is currently impossible—you can only search for ALL ITALICS, not a "all italics inside the body text". Or, again, you'd have to wrestle and hope you got the exact matching font/font size, etc. WHY, when LO already has this info whenever you click your cursor into a piece of text? KEY NOTE #2.1: LibreOffice already has the advanced: - X-Ray/Styles Inspector (Alt+6) feature too. - (But not way to harness this to find "matches" in a user-friendly way.) - - - CASE #3: SELECT ALL "COLOR" Quite often, exported/converted books (especially InDesign) are not using text colors that are: - Automatic - Black Quite often, they are: - Dark Gray - Near-black --- (Probably CMYK-based instead.) Quite often, this type of crap also gets carried over when someone: - Copies/pastes from a website/somewhere. - Overrides with their own direct formatting. For example: If the website's text was near-black, but the book's main text is pure black, User A may never notice... so you'll have random CHUNKS of text throughout with slightly different nearly-black colors. (Usually, the book might have many blockquotes and things, copied/pasted from the same source, so the book is full of SIMILAR—but not-quite-exact—types of direct formatting errors.) This type of stuff is *extremely hard* to catch with the naked eye (or even with a good eye for LO). In Word, this is a simple: 1. Click on weird "oddly colored" word. 2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting". 3. Select the color you want from the dropdowns. - OR apply proper Styles. In LibreOffice, this would be an: - Impossibly-frustrating wrestling of the Find & Replace dialog + "Format"+"Attribute" buttons. - + constant wrestling with the "No Format" to reset your search. KEY NOTE #3: Similar situation happens with hyperlinks. Sometimes the colors in different programs are not-quite the same as LO's hyperlinks, so they have slightly different shades of blue. Hard for human to see, but if you do find one, it becomes a simple 3 button presses in Word. In LibreOffice, it becomes an impossibly frustrating hunt through "Format"+"Attribute" and hope you got the exact hex color correct. (Yes, there's also hopefully hyperlink Character Styles, but see Case #4 below.) - - - CASE #4: CONVERTED MARKUP (PANDOC) See my breakdown in: - https://old.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/10wydhr/change_font_size_of_specific_style/ The user converted their text documents to DOCX using pandoc. This resulted in a lot of Paragraph/Character Styles, such as... The "Source Code" Paragraph Style: - Cambria - Regular - 6pt font but then this gets overridden by 3 Character Styles: - ExtensionTok - NormalTok - VerbatimChar In Word, you'd be able to: 1. Click in a syntax highlighted word. 2. Click "Select All Text with Similar Formatting". - All matching Character Styles are selected. 3. User could tweak as needed. Even a user who was completely unaware of Character Styles would be able to adjust this quickly/easily. (Yes, yes, I know, we should discourage Direct Formatting as much as possible, but Character Styles ARE extremely arcane/buried too—even I don't use them that often and only in sparing cases [emphasis/italics].) KEY NOTE #4: Also, search/replacing Character Styles is currently impossible. See Bug #78582. This type of "Select All Formatting" will be able to get you lots of that power in a much more user-friendly way. - - - SUMMARY For basic/common users, this feature gets packaged into: - A much more user-friendly/user-intuitive way to mass adjust/correct/change documents. For intermediate users, you can: - Combine this with the "Spotlight" Styles Highlighter. - Notice something weird? - Click on it + Similar Styles + choose the Styles you meant. - LO would've found/fixed all matching oddities. - (For example, like the "multiple bullet lists pasted-in-from-who-knows-where user" on Reddit.) For power users, this feature: - Lets you properly tag Styles MUCH MORE quickly. (Seriously, this is a few minute job in Word, but I don't touch LibreOffice's method with a ten foot pole.) (Instead, I do my document-full-of-spaghetti cleanup in Word/elsewhere, then import into LibreOffice later.) -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.
