Defining custom DOCX styles in LibreOffice (and Word)

Modifying styles in LibreOffice (and Word)

Since pandoc 1.18 you can apply custom paragraph and character styles in DOCX output (thanks @jkr!) by assigning a custom-style attribute to divs or spans in Markdown source. 

In order for your custom styles to appear different from the default style you will have to modify them in the appropriate dialog boxes.  Below are the best hints about this which I could find on Google, and a step-by-step description which I wrote myself. 

In case you wonder LibreOffice handles DOCX documents very well, and Pandoc works well with a reference docx file which has been modified in LibreOffice.  This is good because as of Pandoc 1.19.2.1 DOCX support is superior to ODT support in Pandoc, notably including the custom-style attribute feature which doesn't work for ODT. 

Word

Here is a general tutorial for older versions of Word, & official documentation for the more recent Word versions for Windows and macOS. The underlying interface is very similar across different versions of Word.

LibreOffice

These are the most relevant pages in the LibreOffice online help which I could find.  A more hands-on description can be found below them. 

https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Styles_and_Formatting

https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Styles_in_Writer

To change a paragraph style follow these steps:

1. Choose View-->Styles and Formatting or hit the F11 key. 

2. In the dialog or sidebar which opens make sure the button in the top panel marked with ¶ (for paragraph styles) or A (for character styles) is highlighted. 

3. In the menu at the bottom of the dialog/sidebar choose Applied Styles. 

4. In the list which appears look up the style you want to modify. 

   If you haven't used a custom-style attribute with the desired style name in the Markdown document from which your DOCX document was generated you will need to create the style:

   • Look up the style which you want to base your style on in the list of styles.  Unless you got anything more special in mind Default Style or Text Body are good choices for paragraph styles[1] and Default Style, Default Paragraph Font or Body Text Char are good choices for character styles.  Otherwise you may want to switch to Hierarchical in the menu at the bottom of the dialog/sidebar and look up the style you want to base your style on. 

   • Right-click on the name of the style you want to base your style on and choose New... in the popup menu.  A dialog with several tabs for different style choices appears. 

   • In the dialog which opens go to the Organizer tab and enter the name of the new style in the Name text box.  It should be exactly the same as the value of the custom-style attribute on your divs or spans. 

   • Jump to point 6. below. :-)

5. Right-click on the name of the style you want to modify and choose Modify... in the popup menu.  A dialog with several tabs for different categories of style choices appears. 

6. Modify the style to match your requirements.  Note that some settings are in unexpected places.  For example language is set in the Font tab while writing direction is set in the Alignment tab. 

[1] These are also where you want to go to e.g. change the font globally in your document or reference-docx.