Several methods are available to copy cell styles and page styles from one Calc spreadsheet to another file.

Copying cell styles

You found a document called "StylesApplied.ods" somewhere, and you like the styles that are used to format the cells. You want to apply the same nice cell styles in your own spreadsheet. You know that once the styles show up in the "Styles and Formatting" window, you can easily apply a style to the selected cells by double-clicking the style name.

An easy method is to copy the formatted cells from the source document into your document. For example, use drag-and-drop to copy the cells. This copies the cell styles, too. You can now apply the copied cell styles to the other cells in your spreadsheet, and then delete the cells that you did copy.

Copying cell and page styles

To copy any type of styles you can use any of the following methods:

Creating a new document

If you start with a new document, it is best to use the source document with all those nice styles as a template. Then you can start new documents based on that template whenever you want.

1. Open the source document which contains the styles.

2. Save the document as a template:

   Choose File - Templates - Save. You see the Templates dialog, where you can enter a name for the template and select a category. (Note that the picture shows the Templates dialog of StarOffice 8 on Solaris)
   

   
   

3. In this example, you enter the name "myCalcStyles" and click OK. This saves the document as a template with the name "myCalcStyles.ots" to your OOo user/template directory.

To start a new document based on this template, open the Templates and Documents dialog:

1. Choose File - New - Templates and Documents.

2. Click the Templates icon at the left, then double-click the My Templates category.

   
   

3. Double-click the "myCalcStyles" template.

   A new Calc spreadsheet opens. It is based on the template, contains the styles you want, and has an "untitled" name like all new documents.

Copying styles to an existing document

You can use drag-and-drop in the Template Organizer to copy or move styles between any two documents or templates of the same document type.

1. Open both documents - the source and the destination document.

2. Choose File - Templates - Organize to open the Template Management dialog.

3. Click the drop-down list at the lower left (where you see "Templates"), and select "Documents".

   
   

4. In one of the two list boxes, double-click the source file. If you want, you can double-click the destination file in the other list box to see its style contents, although this is not mandatory.

5. Double-click the Styles entry to open a list of all styles in that file.

6. Drag-and-drop the style you want to copy to the destination file name in the other list. Be sure to hold down the Ctrl key to copy the style. You see a plus sign at the mouse pointer. Without the Ctrl key you would move the style from one file to the other.

7. After copying all styles, click Close and save your destination document.

You can only copy or move styles between the same type of documents. Calc styles can only be copied to Calc documents or Calc templates, Writer styles only to other Writer files.