Bug 153971 - Cannot direct-format paragraph, character when selecting (one or more) text boxes
Summary: Cannot direct-format paragraph, character when selecting (one or more) text b...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
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Blocks: Textbox UI
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Reported: 2023-03-04 19:20 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2025-04-01 21:32 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2023-03-04 19:20:53 UTC 
Suppose you create a textbox, type in some text into it, exist it's "edit" state, and select it.

You now cannot access Format | Paragraph..., nor Format | Character...  - they are grayed out. I believe this should change.

Now, you say: "Just double-click the textbox, and these will become available" - but that solution, if at all, can only apply when you have a _single_ textbox. What if I have a 100? or a 1000? That is not an inconceivable number: Just think of an imported PDF, in which every text run has its own text box. Or just a drawing with many small shapes with letters or a word each.

Naturally, the effect of doing so would be the same as what happens when you have multiple selected paragraphs (possibly disjoint) for which you're changing the PS or CS.
Comment 1 Heiko Tietze 2023-03-06 12:00:10 UTC 
Speaking as a technical layman, if you select an object you don't know the content. Might be text but could be anything else too. Meaning you cannot apply text formatting neither to a single textbox or frame nor to multi-selection.

And I believe the way to go is to make drawing styles available in Writer and Calc.
Comment 2 Maxim Monastirsky 2023-03-06 12:32:22 UTC 
Note that DF commands are *not* grayed out in Impress/Draw in this case, and actually work.
Comment 3 Eyal Rozenberg 2023-03-06 13:23:07 UTC 
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #1)
> Speaking as a technical layman, if you select an object you don't know the
> content.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean. Why do I need to "know the content" to set its style?

> Might be text but could be anything else too.
> Meaning you cannot
> apply text formatting neither to a single textbox or frame nor to
> multi-selection.

We're talking about objects which all have text areas. 

If you were to make this argument about the case of objects which cannot have any text, that's a different story - although even then, I should be able to do some DF'ing, and have it  apply to whichever selected objects it can apply to.

> And I believe the way to go is to make drawing styles available in Writer
> and Calc.

That is not an alternative to allowing direct formatting, although that's important to do as well.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2023-03-08 07:39:28 UTC 
We can not only change the font attributes in Draw/Impress but also the area attributes of multiple selected objects in Writer. So users can expect text formatting too.
Comment 5 QA Administrators 2025-04-01 03:21:08 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 6 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-04-01 21:27:50 UTC 
Same behavior as of:

Version: 25.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: d9eac4f95649f04e1ddbe5026d8bb323c1fc58d8
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.6; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-IL (en_IL); UI: en-US