Hi,
my writer Version: 4.2.6.3 Build ID: 420m0(Build:3)

I'm telling my experience because I'm facing some problems in reusing user defined formatting styles. May be I'm not using the software correctly.

I use MS Word since its first editions (Win 3.1) and I'm doing a test using LibreOffice to replace Word. I don't like the new interface paradigm that Ms introduced in Word 2007 and I'm trying also to verify at what degree can Linux replace MS Windows in corporate usage. 

I'm trying to create a standardized text development environment as the one I have with MS Word.

I created a base template from which all other templates would be created.

In that template-document I defined formatting styles, e.g., "Heading1", "Text Body H1", "Text Body H1 - Bullet", ..., and did this for all indenting levels.
Each Heading has a outline numbering scheme like x.x.x...

This was not easy task, although being a very simple formatting: it seems there are 2 incompatible formatting paths: one in style-modify, the other at tools-outline format. The 1st one I tryed in 1st place, as it seemed the obvious; the later, the path indicated in the help content, and this was the one that worked.
At last, I did what I wanted and had the styles defined for reuse.
 
Then I got into the usage problems in 2 situations:
1) having a previously written text, I applied the new formatting standard by updating style Format - Styles and Formatting - Load Styles. As I have not defined styles to automatically update, I reformatted each text portion but the new styles were not applied. I had to rewrite the text!

2) creating new texts from the template File - New - Templates
Here I got the formatting styles but they don't work as expected, that is,  having text selected and then applying style should change the style and should change the display accordingly. No. It did not work.

Examples: 
Having a Heading 2 text, that is outline numbered, and changing the style to Text Body H2, which is not numbered, the text keeps the outline numbering.

Having a Text Body H2,which is not bulleted, changing it to Text Body H2 - Bullet, which is bulleted, I expected that the text would gain a bullet and would be indented as the style definition. No.

Having a Text Body H2 - Bullet ,which is bulleted, and changing it to Text Body H2, which is not bulleted, I expected that the text would loose the bullet and would be indented as the style definition. No. I need to uncheck the bullet button on the ribbon.

3) Having a text formatted using the styles defined in the template, After saving the document and later working again on it, in some paragraphs the text style was the one that should be, but the indentation was incorrect and also the outline numbering.

In a summary, this is not working or I'm not working it the right way.

I hope this feedback is useful and thank for help if I'm not using the software the right way.

BR

Pedro

PS: and there's this thing of the cursor changing its position to somewhere, which creates a huge disturbance on a fluent fast software usage, but I believe this is Linux...