Format Painter doesn't work

[Woody44]

I recently upgraded from the free version of FreeOffice 2018 to the paid version of SoftMaker Office 2021. I have encountered a problem in TextMaker:

In Microsoft Word, the Format Painter (the paintbrush icon) works fairly intuitively ==> highlight a paragraph, click on the paintbrush icon to copy the format, then click on a target paragraph and the format is transferred. And according to the TextMaker user manual, it seems to it's supposed to work the same way in TextMaker. But it doesn't.

In TextMaker, I highlight a paragraph, click on the paintbrush icon, then click on the target paragraph. Nothing happens.

So I tried again, by highlighting the source paragraph, clicking on the paintbrush icon, then dragging the mouse across the extent of the target paragraph. That didn't work, either.

Also tried using CTRL+Shift+C and CTRL+Shift+V ... that didn't work.

Lastly, I tried using the Format Painter command from the [Classic] menu. Needless to say, that also failed.

The file:

18 Memoir Publishers Open _to_Authors.docx

(17.08 KiB) Downloaded 296 times

Thank you.

[Jossi]

In Microsoft Word, the Format Painter (the paintbrush icon) works fairly intuitively ==> highlight a paragraph, click on the paintbrush icon to copy the format, then click on a target paragraph and the format is transferred. And according to the TextMaker user manual, it seems to it's supposed to work the same way in TextMaker. But it doesn't.

The format paintbrush works in TextMaker just the way you describe it. But as far as I can see, in your sample document all paragraphs have the same format. So what are you going to change?

[Woody44]

The hot links are separate paragraphs unto themselves. The default paragraph style has 12 points of space after each paragraph. I manually set one hot link to have zero space after, then I attempted to use the format painter to change other hot links.

It didn't work. It does work in Word 2016.

In TextMaker I had to manually set the space after through the dialogue box for each entry.

Here's a new file that demonstrates the problem. The first line has extra space after it -- the other three do not. If I highlight the first paragraph and click the paintbrush icon, when I then click the second or third paragraph -- nothing happens. The space-after formatting is not copied to the target paragraph.

TextMaker_format_painter_test.docx

(12.08 KiB) Downloaded 290 times

[Jossi]

Sorry, I overlooked the different "Space after" settings. Anyway, for me it works flawlessly with both sample documents. It is important, however, to select the whole original paragraph before invoking the format paintbrush (easiest done by double-clicking in the left margin besides the paragraph). If you only set the cursor somewhere in the paragraph, it doesn't work. For pasting the format it is sufficient to click somewhere in a paragraph to change it.

[martin-k]

By default, the format painter copies character formatting. If you want it to also include paragraph formatting, press the Ctrl key.

https://help.softmaker.com/textmaker202 ... at+painter

[Jossi]

This is correct, but if you select the whole paragraph before using the format paintbrush, paragraph formatting is also transferred, without pressing the Ctrl key.

[Woody44]

Sorry, I overlooked the different "Space after" settings. Anyway, for me it works flawlessly with both sample documents. It is important, however, to select the whole original paragraph before invoking the format paintbrush (easiest done by double-clicking in the left margin besides the paragraph). If you only set the cursor somewhere in the paragraph, it doesn't work. For pasting the format it is sufficient to click somewhere in a paragraph to change it.

I selected the entire paragraph. That's also necessary in Word, so I know to do that when I want to copy a paragraph format.

It didn't work.

[Woody44]

Update:

I selected the source paragraph by clicking and dragging the mouse. Unlike in Word, in TextMaker this does NOT select the backwards 'P' symbol at the end of the paragraph. When I selected the paragraph by double clicking in the left margin, it DID include the end-paragraph symbol ... and then the Format painter worked.

Why isn't it possible to select the symbol the way it works in Word? It would never in ten thousand years ever have occurred to me that double clicking in the margin would select a paragraph ... AND do so differently from using the mouse, as I have been doing for 30 years or more.

[SuperTech]

Thanks for confirming that it worked as per your expectations.

Why isn't it possible to select the symbol the way it works in Word?

Because it's TextMaker and not Word. We have seamless file compatibility, which is true, but not every behavior of the software is exactly the same.

To select a paragraph break, as you mentioned, one method is by triple-clicking and the other method is by clicking in front of the paragraph.

[Woody44]

Thanks for confirming that it worked as per your expectations.

It would probably be more accurate to say that it worked as per your expectations. This entire thread exists because it does NOT work as per my expectations.

Why isn't it possible to select the symbol the way it works in Word?

Because it's TextMaker and not Word. We have seamless file compatibility, which is true, but not every behavior of the software is exactly the same.

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but you do not have seamless file compatibility with Word. Earlier this year, a fiend of mine in Greece and I did a file compatibility experiment covering Word, TextMaker, and LibreOffice Writer. I'm sorry that I don't remember what file we used, but the result was that when a file I created in Word was opened by either TextMaker or LibeOffice Writer, there were formatting glitches. The text all came in, but the formatting changed in subtle ways.

The same is true for PlamMaker's compatibility with Excel files.

Overall, SoftMaker Office's compatibility is (in my estimation) approximately equal to that of LibreOffice, and I would rate it at about 90 percent (possibly 92 to 93 percent). It definitely is not "seamless," which to me would require 100 percent compatibility.

[Woody44]

Thanks for confirming that it worked as per your expectations.

It would probably be more accurate to say that it worked as per your expectations. This entire thread exists because it does NOT work as per my expectations.

Why isn't it possible to select the symbol the way it works in Word?

Because it's TextMaker and not Word. We have seamless file compatibility, which is true, but not every behavior of the software is exactly the same.

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but you do not have seamless file compatibility with Word. Earlier this year, a friend of mine in Greece and I did a file compatibility experiment covering Word, TextMaker, and LibreOffice Writer (which he uses). I'm sorry that I don't remember what file we used so I can't send it to you, but the result was that when a file I created in Word was opened by either TextMaker or LibreOffice Writer, there were formatting glitches. The text all came in, but the formatting changed in subtle ways.

The same is true for PlamMaker's compatibility with Excel files.

Overall, SoftMaker Office's compatibility is (in my estimation) approximately equal to that of LibreOffice (although the errors are not the same for both), and I would rate it at about 90 percent (possibly 92 to 93 percent). It definitely is not "seamless," which to me would require 100 percent compatibility.

[Woody44]

Thanks for confirming that it worked as per your expectations.

It would probably be more accurate to say that it worked as per your expectations. This entire thread exists because it does NOT work as per my expectations.

Because it's TextMaker and not Word. We have seamless file compatibility, which is true, but not every behavior of the software is exactly the same.

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but you do not have seamless file compatibility with Word. Earlier this year, a friend of mine in Greece and I did a file compatibility experiment covering Word, TextMaker, and LibreOffice Writer (which he uses). I'm sorry that I don't remember what file we used so I can't send it to you, but the result was that when a file I created in Word was opened by either TextMaker or LibreOffice Writer, there were formatting glitches. The text all came in, but the formatting changed in subtle ways.

The same is true for PlanMaker's compatibility with Excel files.

Overall, SoftMaker Office's compatibility is (in my estimation) approximately equal to that of LibreOffice (although the errors are not the same for both), and I would rate it at about 90 percent (possibly 92 to 93 percent). It definitely is not "seamless," which to me would require 100 percent compatibility.

[SuperTech]

Without the test files, we can't check what exactly happened with your files.

[Woody44]

Without the test files, we can't check what exactly happened with your files.

I understand that, but we conducted our testing months ago, with dummy files that we had no reason to preserve after we had completed our investigations.

The errors weren't major, and I suspect they were mostly a result of font metrics. Some lines broke in different places when the sample files were opened in TextMaker, and this resulted in page breaks not occurring at the same point in the text. Perhaps your definition of "seamless" differs from mine. To me, "seamless" compatibility means that if I open a Word document in TextMaker, it should appear and print exactly the same in TextMaker as it does in word.