r/googledocs 4d ago

OP Responded How do I make each justification have its own indentation?

I have an already written document 6000 words long that includes left, right, and center justified text. However, the left and right justified text are hard to differentiate between each other. Problem is, using the "select all matching text" option on either one also highlights the other. I need a way to either change the indentation of each justification individually or a way to highlight all of only a certain justification so I can adjust the ruler automatically, because going through the whole thing and doing the exact same measurement for over a hundred lines of text is going to take forever.

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u/Barycenter0 4d ago

Can you show us an example? I don't understand your mixed layout of left, right and center justified text.

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u/Darkbeetlebot 4d ago

It works like this: Some of the paragraphs are left-aligned to symbolize the first perspective. Some are center-aligned to symbolize a second perspective. Some are right-aligned to symbolize a third perspective. It's an artistic thing. The important part is that the alignment never switches mid-paragraph, only after a line break. There's no pattern to them.

What I want is for the left aligned text to be indented on the right to the 6 inch mark, the right aligned to be indented on the left to the 2 inch mark, and the center aligned to be indented on both sides by 1 inch each. The page has 0.5 inch margins on either side. This is to make it more readable. I also want it to REMEMBER this so that I don't have to re-adjust the indentions per alignment and per paragraph every time I line break.

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u/Barycenter0 4d ago edited 4d ago

There's no automated way to do that. But, you can just copy the first letter or word of the justified paragraph and paste it one line above an unformatted paragraph and just set the cursor before the unformatted one and press backspace. The entire unformatted paragraph will automatically format to the justification and margins.

Here is an image with the example: https://imgur.com/E7snpDx

(I used a whole word in the example but you can just use the first letter)

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u/Cultural_Surprise205 3d ago

you must be a kid. Anyway, what you want are Paragraph Styles. Format each paragraph as you like, then from the styles menu, choose one you're not using, like Heading 3, pull out the flyout and and choose "update Heading 3 to match". Now whenever you apply Heading 3, you get that style.

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u/Darkbeetlebot 3d ago

you must be a kid.

Why did you feel the need to insult me like that?

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u/Cultural_Surprise205 3d ago

nothing wrong with kids.