I got used to using Open Office years ago and have been doing so since. However, I keep discovering problems with this when it comes to writing. A while ago I realized that when an Open Office document is opened in Word, the last line is chopped off for some reason. So I started hitting enter a couple times at the end of documents before submitting them. Now, I've figured out that for some reason Office documents opened in Word have the page settings changed--a setting of one inch margins at the top becomes more than one inch, destroying my efforts to put the document in standard manuscript format. I'm grateful other people informed me of these things or I would have never realized I was sending stuff in wrong--anyway, the point is, I said "screw it" and started using Word. In Open Office, if I go to paragraph settings, the option exists to set the indent of ONLY the first line of a paragraph to a specific setting. Word doesn't have this in its paragraph options--it allows me to indent the entire paragraph and that's it. So my question is, how in Microsoft Word do I set only the first line of a paragraph to be indented by X amount?
It was in Format Paragraph through Word 2003. With the new ribbon menu, it's Paragraph Settings, but it's hidden. From the Home tab, you click the tiny little arrow at the lower right corner of the Paragraph panel. Or you can do it graphically by just grabbing the pointer on the top row of the horizontal ruler and dragging it. All subsequent paragraphs should follow that setting unless you change it. Regarding Word and Open Office Writer -- it seems they don't measure top and bottom margins the same way, so that has to be taken into account. As much as I like and admire freeware, Open Office is just a bit too quirky and clunky (and SLOOOOOOOOOW) for my everyday needs. I keep it on my computers for special tasks that Word can't handle but, in general I think SoftMaker TextMaker is a much better Word substitute.