OpenOffice help needed!!!

[avevale_intelligencer]

I have a document which I'm trying to correct so that I can get it into a book. It's made up of three separate files which I combined, and I can get it looking reasonably good.

The only problem is, when I save it and then reopen it, the formatting has gone completely insane. Five or six fonts alternating, often in mid-paragraph, justification and margins reset, random "styles" inserted at odd points, and the fonts I put in just gone. I have tried time and again and it happens every single time. I've reduced it to a text file and pasted it into a brand new document. Same result. And of course I don't know if the gremlins are getting in when I save it or when I reopen it.

I need to get this thing to settle down and look the way I want it to look. Can anyone advise me as to what might be going on here, or how I might find out?

Originally posted on http://avevale_intelligencer.dreamwidth.org. Comment here or there or both if you wish.

Comments

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

No idea what's going on - but you could try copying the whole thing to a text file. That will remove all the formatting. Then copy the text file to an open office document and format as required. Of course, you'll have to re-do all the italicisations one by one...

Bollocks. Just re-read your post properly this time.

You already did that. Hmm. Did you just save it as a .txt, or copy/paste to a new .txt?

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

In the formatting menu there's a "clear direct formatting" option. Have you tried that?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did, and it didn't help either, sadly. On the other hand, saving it as .odt instead of .doc seems to have brought it under control, touch wood. If it lasts, I should be okay, since Lulu actually prefer PDFs to docs these days.

But thank you for riding to the rescue. Your comments helped me to stop jittering and start thinking.

I still want to know *why* it happened, not to mention how, but I don't anticipate ever finding an explanation I can understand. It's the Voo-Doo, I tell you...